


Outside In

by AraniaDraws (AraniaArt), Parrannnah



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bucky Barnes's Metal Arm, Canon-Inspired, Canon-Typical Violence, Captain America Steve Rogers, Identity Porn, Identity Reveal, M/M, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Secret Identity, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Is a Good Bro, Transformation, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-06
Updated: 2018-06-06
Packaged: 2019-05-17 01:18:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 30,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14822477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AraniaArt/pseuds/AraniaDraws, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Parrannnah/pseuds/Parrannnah
Summary: "Bucky looked down again and felt his whole body break out in goosebumps, every hair he had standing up straight. He’d made a wish, sure. He’d made thousands of wishes in his lifetime, and none of them had ever, ever come true. But he’d wished for something to make him whole again, and while he’d been mostly speaking emotionally and mentally, the universe had apparently taken that as literally as possible because, in the center of this impact crater in the middle of a meadow in the Catskill Mountains, was an arm."Bucky has a secret. Steve does too. They'll have to come clean if they want to save the world.





	1. Space Jam

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first-ever Bang! It has been such a blast, and I have had such a wonderful artist collaborating with me! [AraniaArt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AraniaArt) has been so amazing and the art she created for this story is so lovely and wonderful, I could not have a better artist! And, we have TWO art pieces for this fic, along with the header!! One is in this chapter, and one is in Chapter 4.
> 
> As always, huge thanks go out to the most wonderful Beta to ever Beta, the inimitable [Bear_shark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bear_shark/pseuds/Bear_shark). I would be lost otherwise. Seriously, she put in WORK on this fic and I am forever grateful for her <3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the middle of the night, in a cabin deep in the Catskills Mountains, Bucky Barnes lay awake on a tiny twin bed and wondered if his dad was full of shit.

In his 25 years of interaction with his father, this was definitely not the first time he’d wondered this.

He’d come home from the desert ten months ago, having lost not only his arm but his sense of purpose and the only career option he’d ever considered. Enter George Barnes, who was convinced that his son just needed to get out of the city for a while, to take some time to get to know his new self without everyone watching,which had sounded like solid advice at the time

But after three days in a cabin in the woods, Bucky was pretty sure the real reason he was out here was because his dad was sick of seeing him storm and mope and had basically sent him to his room. His room, in this case, being Grandpa Barnes old hunting cabin out in the sticks. Dad had even driven him up here since Bucky could no longer drive the family car with just the one arm. His mom, the wonderful woman that she was, was also damn cheap and only ever bought manual transmission vehicles.

So, Dad had promised to be back in a week, barring any medical emergencies that required him to come back early.

Bucky wondered if death by boredom would constitute a valid medical emergency.

Surprisingly, there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot for a one-armed city boy to do in the mountains. Hunting was out, fishing too, and hiking by himself deep into the mountains just seemed like a bad idea, so he’d had to stick to the close paths, and those failed to grab his attention or tire him out enough to make sleep come easy. He’d never been afraid of things that seemed difficult before, but that was before. He’d survived off of instincts and skill a few times when shit had gotten FUBAR overseas, but there had been two working arms in the mix. Now there were days he was so frustrated with his one-armed state he barely even wanted to try putting his pants on.

So here he was. In the dark. Unable to sleep due to the lack of noise of any kind.

“Fuck it,” Bucky said aloud, just to hear something besides nature, before awkwardly rolling off the bed. He stood, making sure he had his balance before pulling the quilt off the bed and tossing it over his left shoulder, wrapping it around himself like one of those giant hipster scarves his sister loved. He grabbed a pillow and headed for the door, figuring he may as well enjoy the one good thing about being so far away from a city: the stars.

Bucky managed to get out of the cabin with most of his dignity intact and clomped his way into the meadow behind the building. He tucked the pillow between his thighs before unwinding the quilt from his shoulders and attempting to fling it out enough to settle flat, which worked better than he expected but he still had to toss the pillow on the quilt, then get down to straighten it out all the way. He arranged himself comfortably on the blanket, the dew not settled enough on the grass yet to soak through, and laid back to stare up at the sky.

As far back as he could remember, something about the night sky had comforted him while simultaneously scaring the bejesus out of him. He loved its vastness and the idea that these stars had guided travelers all over the world for generations. At the same time, something about the fact that he was just this teeny, tiny speck in the universe and probably not important in the grand scheme of the cosmos gave him anxiety. So his mom had suggested that he learn more about the thing that scared him, hoping it would take some of the mystery out of it and negate his fears a little.

It had helped him when he first joined the Army, being able to name constellations wherever he was in the country. Between basic, his first duty station in Washington, and his eventual home with Special Forces in North Carolina, he'd always taken comfort in the familiarity of the heavenly bodies above him.

When he’d gotten word he was heading to The Sandbox, his mom had given him a book on constellations in the middle east. He’d carried it with him every day until it had been torn to shreds in the attack that took his arm. It had brought him unexpected levels of stability, being able to name the figures slowly rotating overhead in the language of the country he was in as well as his own.

Bucky let his eyes roam, taking in the familiar sight of brightness burning against the dark, and started to name them, tracing their shapes with his fingers.

“Leo,” he whispered something in him unwilling to break the silence completely. Personally, he’d always thought it looked more like a mouse than a lion, but that was unimportant. He sketched the shape of the tail and connected the dots of the body, the outline from his first picture book taking shape in his mind’s eye as he did. He dropped his arm and searched for the next big constellation, spotting Virgo’s brightest star Spica by following the curve of the Big Dipper’s handle. He repeated the action from before, using his fingers to trace the outline he knew so well.

He was searching for the Hydra, the biggest constellation in the spring sky when he saw something shoot across the sky. Shooting star, he thought to himself. Better make a wish. He clamped his eyes shut and with everything he had, wished for a purpose, for something to make him whole again.

When he opened his eyes again, he noticed that what he had thought was a shooting star was actually something hurtling straight towards him. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” he yelled. He scrambled to his feet, trying desperately to get upright as quickly as possible. If a damn roadside bomb and an ambush couldn't take him out, he wasn’t about to let some space junk do it. He managed to make it up and took off running for the cabin as fast as he could, arm pumping by his side as he tried not to swerve all over the place. He heard the whistle as whatever it was displaced all the air around it before a huge “bwoooom!” announced its landing. The ground shook with the impact and he skidded to a stop a few feet from the back porch.

Bucky turned around, the dust from the impact wafting towards him, his eyes stinging and his lungs tightening with the grit. He leaned over, arm braced on his thigh as he tried to cough all the dirt out of his respiratory system. Once he’d gotten his body under control, and the fallout from the whatever-it-was hitting the earth settled, he started making his way back over to the crash site.

The crater wasn’t huge, so he could see the thing that had landed glinting dully from the center of it. He probably shouldn’t go down to it, seeing as he was barefoot, wearing only his pajama pants and, oh yeah, _down an arm_ but hadn’t he just been having the conversation with himself about how brave he used to be? Guess it was time to nut up or shut up.

Feeling like a lopsided mountain goat, he picked his way along the crater wall and down to the floor, the space junk still wreathed in dust or steam or smoke or space vapor or something. He inched closer, left side to the junk since he wasn’t about to risk his only remaining arm to space junk, but still couldn’t make out what it was.. Turning to face it head on, he tried wafting the space vapor away from it, only to have it swirl and dance around him. He crouched down, weight resting on his heels and tried to decide the next course of action.

There was really only one thing for it.

“This is fuckin’ dumb, Barnes, even for you,” he muttered to himself, reaching out slowly to touch the junk.

In a sensation he would be hard-pressed to describe as anything other than “yeeeuch,” he felt the solid? liquid? substance under his fingertips start to move and flow and shift and move which he was 95% sure was not supposed to happen (but like, it was potentially from outer space, so he couldn’t be sure it wasn’t), and he yanked his hand back as fast as he could, coinciding with the space vapor getting the fuck outta there, too.

He looked down again and felt his whole body break out in goosebumps, every hair he had standing up straight. He’d made a wish, sure. He’d made thousands of wishes in his lifetime, and none of them had ever, ever come true. But he’d wished for something to make him whole again, and while he’d been mostly speaking emotionally and mentally, the universe had apparently taken that as literally as possible because, in the center of this impact crater in the middle of a meadow in the Catskill Mountains, was an arm.

\--

Bucky would deny it for the rest of his life, but he let out a very undignified shriek before he scrambled up the soft dirt sides of the crater. He hauled ass back to the cabin, disregarding personal safety and his new limitations because he was not about to sit there with some crazy space-tech that had apparently trans-fucking-formed into a goddamn arm. And not just any arm, bust specifically a left arm, which he was currently lacking and was just too incredibly coincidental for him to not freak out over.

He banged his way inside the cabin before slamming the door shut and throwing the bolt because he would be damned if he was going to assume that the space-arm behaved like any other arm that happened to not be attached to a body. It was a fucking space-arm, it wasn’t bound by such silly things as human logic.

After twenty minutes of panicked breathing and a lot of what the fuck? he rallied. “Okay, Barnes, come on. You have faced down people actively trying to kill you, and bombs, and Dad’s cooking. You can go look at a whatever-that-is.”

Which is how Bucky came to find himself standing in the crater once again, staring at the arm that was reassuringly exactly where he’d left it. The weird mist seemed to have cleared, at last, so he could see the arm glinting dully in what little light there was from the moon and stars. The part of him that has always loved taking things apart and finding out how they worked was itching to pick it up and examine it more closely. He was 99% sure it wasn’t a bomb, mainly because he’d picked up a stone on his way back and had lobbed it as hard as he could into the crater before he’d come down. He’d heard it “clunk” off the metal, though in a strangely dull way, other than that nothing had happened. He knew better, really he did, but he couldn’t hold back any longer.

He planted himself firmly on his knees, the soft dirt giving and settling against his skin. The spring air around him was settling damply in the hollows of his body and he could feel the goosebumps rising on his arm and legs. The part of him that was leftover from his caveman ancestors was simultaneously telling him not to touch the thing and to touch the thing! He must have come from one of those cavemen who saw something that could definitely kill them and instead went “hey, that could be useful.”

“Get it together, Barnes,” he told himself, knowing he could sit here all night rambling in his own head just to avoid what he was going to do. Slowly, mostly out of caution but a little bit out of bad balance, he stretched his fingers toward the arm. Sweat prickled along his hairline and down his spine as his nerves kicked up, and his eyes squeezed shut so he didn’t have to potentially witness the loss of his only remaining arm. His fingers were almost there, they were hovering just above the surface and…

Nothing happened.

If that isn’t some anti-climactic BS, Bucky thought to himself. He’d honestly been expecting more from some weird space-arm, like lasers or explosions or time travel. Just...Something.

Now that he was sure The Arm wasn’t going to kill him, he grabbed it by the wrist and pulled, dragging it across the ground towards him before hoisting it up and balancing it on his shoulder like he used to do with his rifle. That thought made him a little bitter about all the things he couldn’t do, so he pushed it away, making his way carefully up the slope of the crater and back to the cabin.

After setting The Arm down so he could open the door, he tucked it under his arm for the remaining journey into the house. He had a gooseneck lamp on the nightstand in his bedroom that would provide ample light for assuaging his curiosity about how this thing looked, because even on the walk to his room he noticed it reflected light like the most highly polished chrome, but didn’t seem to collect fingerprints or dust or dirt, which was making his brain glitch a little.

He made his way into his bedroom and sat down on his bed, The Arm draped across his lap with the shoulder end balanced on his left leg while he held the wrist with his right hand. The window was still open behind him from earlier, and he could hear crickets in the meadow and the breeze as it rustled through the trees, cold tendrils sneaking in and raising goosebumps on his skin.

“Alright, Space Jam, let’s get a look at you.”

For the rest of his life, Bucky would swear that what happened next was an absolute accident, no matter how many times people accused him of doing it on purpose.

He slid the arm on the mattress next to his thigh, trying to balance it enough to get a good look at the wires he’d noticed protruding from what would be the joint on a regular arm. The metal, while light enough that carrying it back to the cabin had been relatively easy, was still some kind of metal, and the head bulk of the weight was concentrated at the top. Right as he got the arm upright, it started to slowly tip sideways.

Instinct kicked in, and Bucky moved. He knew he needed to stop the slow descent of The Arm to the floor because he wasn’t positive that wouldn’t trigger some kind of explosion or something, and, surprise, he was really wary about explosions, so he slid what was left of his own shoulder up against the interior surface of the metal, the wires tickling his skin. As the forward momentum stopped, he took a deep breath and clenched his abdominals, getting ready to heave himself and The Arm upright.

Until he felt the wires start to move.

“The fuck…?” Bucky looked down, eyes growing larger as he stared down at his shoulder in incomprehension.

The wires were moving, snaking their way over the flat surface of his shoulder. He could feel the innumerable plates beneath the fingers of his right hand moving minutely, almost as if they were vibrating slightly like it was…powering on.

“Nonononono,” Bucky moaned, trying to wiggle away from the searching ends of the wires, now definitely moving on their own all over his skin and stretching towards him with apparent disregard for his wishes.

Every muscle in Bucky’s body tensed so hard it was essentially a full body cramp as white-hot, searing pain engulfed his senses from where the metal was now pressed against the remains of his shoulder. He managed a deep breath around the screaming, something he hadn’t realized he was doing until he stopped, and, wow, it was good he was in the literal middle of nowhere because he had no idea how he would have explained this to anyone who had rushed in to see what in the actual fuck was happening. He had long since stopped trying to make it stop, knew any kind of action towards detachment was futile, and just hoped to God that this either ended soon or killed him outright, because he’d already lived through more pain in his life than anyone should, and he wasn’t sure he could take much more.

He knew when the wires reached his backbone, and that such little things as vertebrae wouldn’t stop them from reaching his spinal cord. The first tentative touches along his nerves were unnatural and unwelcome and he prayed for unconsciousness at the very least when suddenly, everything stopped. In a fraction of a second, everything changed.

He felt all of his synapses fire at once, like someone flipping every light switch in a house simultaneously. He lit up from his head to his toes and knew that nothing would ever be the same.

What’s happening? He thought, and had the answer immediately, though he didn’t know how. _Increased mental acuity, decreased processing times, neural pathways fully engaged._

What? WHAT? Bucky was lying flat on his back, not sure if he could even manage to sit up at all, or ever again, really, when all of a sudden he just was. Nothing hurt, though every single cell in his body should undoubtedly be aching and sore, but he felt…

He felt fucking amazing.

He looked over to The Arm, where it had apparently decided to attach itself to him (Which, not cool, apparently aliens had zero concept of consent) and marveled. There was a slightly raised, brand new scar around the seam of flesh and metal, and even though it was minutes old at the most, it looked like it had been there for weeks already.

Whaaaaaaaa? He questioned, and just like before, the answer was there immediately. _Healing inefficient, cells recalibrated for maximum effectiveness._

“The hell you say,” he said aloud, aware that he was talking to himself, but also distinctly...not talking to himself? His brain was struggling to wrap itself around that.

Or, well. It should have been, But apparently whatever the fuck was going on had turned his entire goddamn body into a fucking traitor because he knew he should be freaking out but he wasn’t. Instead, he was noticing ever tiny little detail all around him and still managing to catalog what was happening to him and also thinking fifteen steps ahead of everything. It should have been exhausting, he should have been pulling his hair out with that amount of processing but he wasn’t. He got his feet under him and started to stand up, immediately tipping to the left before reaching out and righting himself.

Wait.

Bucky turned his head slowly and let his eyes travel slowly over his left side. The shiny metal fingers were splayed against the rumpled bedspread and they tensed minutely with Bucky’s agitation.

“Ho-ly shit,” he breathed, eyes damn near bugging out of his face. He leaned back a little and did something he hadn’t be able to do since he got back from the desert.

He moved his left arm.

The plates on The Arm shifted a little as it lifted and turned, the palm of his (if it was attached to him and doing what he wanted it to do, he definitely claimed ownership) hand facing him as he leaned forward to scrutinize the joins between the plates, twitching his fingers minutely at first before broadening the motions, watching the way the metal shifted to accommodate the movement. The part of him that had always been fascinated by how things worked was having a field day, wanting nothing more than to take it apart and put it back together to learn its secrets. He twisted his palm to the floor, watching the smooth shift of metal as he rotated the joints at wrist and elbow and shoulder, fascinated with the sheer brilliance of the design. He knew that before, he would never have totally understood the intricacies of just how he was managing to control his arm, but there was a calm descending upon him, and the little voice that sounded so much like himself was providing explanations in a way he understood and knew twenty minutes ago he wouldn’t have.

Part of him was scared, so scared to be sitting here with this giant piece of alien tech, that had attached itself to his body without his permission, working in tandem with his brain.

And the part of him that had felt less than, and small, and burdensome since he lost his arm, was telling him not to question it too much, not to think so hard and talk himself out of this absolute fucking miracle that had fallen from the sky.

In the end, that part won out.

\--

When George had dropped him off, hoping some time away from the city would help his son find his bearings in his changed skin, he wouldn’t have really factored an Unidentified Alien Limb into the equation, but it wasn’t like A) Bucky was gonna mention the space-arm or B) Would even be looking that particular gift-horse in its space-mouth. Literally or figuratively.

Because, lo and behold, the arm could come off.

The first night, after his panic had subsided, he’d done everything he’d struggled to do for months: put his pants on with ease, open tricky jars, comb his hair and brush his teeth at the same time, and if he would have had something other than slip-on shoes, he would have been lacing those bad boys up all night.

There was only one thing. See, it seems that when whoever it was answering him when he asked questions about the arm (he refused to think it was his own brain cause that was just too much in a situation that was already a lot), was only scratching the surface on what the whole cells recalibrated for maximum effectiveness thing. Healing was more efficient, sure: all the little bruises he picked up from still dealing with the balancing act that was his life now were gone, no matter if he’d only gotten them that morning. The nicks he’d gotten shaving yesterday? Tiny pink lines that instead of angry red abrasions. None of the myriad aches and pains he lived with now were there anymore. So, yeah, healing had been ramped up. But so had everything else.

He had to believe that his cells were operating at the maximum efficiency levels now because he was stronger and faster than he had any right to be, could see farther and in more detail that should be possible, could hear every little sound around him.

Nature was fucking loud.

And, yes, there had been a learning curve in which he’d crumpled the can of beans he’d been trying to open (with a manual can opener, suck on that), shattered the pickles and cracked the orange juice lid. He hadn’t realized how strong this alien appendage was at first, but over the last few days, he’d finally managed to only squeeze too hard 3 out of 7 times.

He even had some toothpaste left in the tube on the last day.

After Bucky had brushed his teeth and packed his duffle, he sat on the bed trying to figure out how in the hell he was going to explain to his dad why the one-armed son was now suddenly sporting dual upper body appendages when he started feeling the plates shift around. Normally, he had to be consciously thinking about making them move, or causing them to do so by using the arm for them to start shifting all over the place like this, but he’d done neither of those things and yet here they were clack-clacking away like castanets on speed and then suddenly he was listing to the right, feeling the reverberations of something heavy hitting the mattress.

He tried to plant his hands on the blankets to push himself up and discovered that hands, plural, had turned into hand, singular. He whipped his head as far to the left as he could, struggling his way upright and saw The Arm lying innocuously next to him.

Well. Okay. So that answered that.

Bucky picked up the arm again, looking at the inside surface of the shoulder, noticing its smooth surface with just a few wires sticking out. They didn’t look like any kind of circuitry Bucky had ever seen: there was no insulation or sheathing to be seen, and they seemed to be woven together in a way that looked shockingly similar to the plate construction on the arm itself. When he looked at the corresponding surface of his own arm, he noticed scarring that matched the plate pattern on The Arm, almost like it had branded him, and that outlining the scarring was a faint band of electric blue. There were indents where the nubs of the wires would press when The Arm was attached, but other than that, nothing visible from the outside that would hint at the neural connection. He briefly wondered what he would look like on an x-ray or MRI now, but didn’t want to try explaining any anomalies that may pop up.

He was itching to see if he could make The Arm come off again by thinking about it, but he knew his dad was due any minute and didn’t want to run the risk of being caught in a situation he only barely understood himself.

And so it was that Bucky found himself sitting on the front porch of the cabin when George pulled up, a smile on his face and a secret in his bag.

“Hiya, son,” George said, waving cheerily as he came around the car. “Have a good time?”

Bucky stood on the steps of the cabin, sunshine on his face highlighting the first honest-to-God grin he’d had since he came home.

“Yeah, I really did.”

George smiled, happiness at Bucky’s demeanor shining through. “You feelin’ better? Was I right or was I right?” George reached for the bag in Bucky’s hand, but Bucky just gripped the strap tighter and threw it over his shoulder, making his way down to the gravel where the car was parked.

“You know what Dad, as much as it pains me to say it, you were right. I think things are finally looking up.” Bucky tactfully chose to not mention the tears glistening in his father’s eyes, giving George a moment to collect himself. He looked slung his bag forward and set it on the ground to open the door to the car, noticing a flash of light as he did so. The zipper hadn’t closed all the way on his duffle, the last half inch left open to the sunlight, bouncing off the miracle he was hiding. Yeah, things were definitely looking up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments/Kudos always appreciated :D
> 
> Come hang out with me on [Tumblr!](https://kat-atomic.tumblr.com/)  
> 


	2. Surprise!

“Not a fucking chance.”

Three days after coming home from the mountains, Bucky was standing in his parent’s living room (okay so right now it was also HIS living room, but that wasn’t a thing he wanted to think because this situation was Not Permanent) and couldn’t even huffily cross his arms over his chest to show with the actions that would definitely be louder than words that He Was Not Doing This.

Twenty minutes and a guilt trip from his mother later, he was on the subway with his dad, headed to Midtown Manhattan and the absolute blight upon the skyline that was Stark Tower.

The week Bucky had spent in the mountains had proved very fruitful for George Barnes it seemed (though not as fruitful as the week his son had had, but that was a secret). George had run into his old buddy Howard Stark, someone Bucky knew his dad had known as a science geek and all around genius back in the Army. The story Bucky’s dad had always told was that Howard had joined up at the insistence of his old man, who’d wanted Howard to be an officer, so the heir to Stark Industries could be in front of the Brass so they could keep the big government contracts.

Howard had managed to do that anyway, mostly by being a recurring nightmare to every CO he’d ever had. Much to Stark Senior’s everlasting irritation, Howard had gone the route of the common man: spending six years in the muck and the dirt and the suck that was the enlisted ranks of the US Army.

George and Howard had spent time in the desert, just like Bucky, and he remembered Howard a little from his childhood before the two men had gotten busy with life and kids and work. Howard had taken over for his dad when he’d passed, promptly giving up all the weapons contracts that had made Stark Industries billions of dollars. He’d seen what those weapons did to people first hand, had seen some of them fall into the wrong hands and had lost friends because of them. He decided he wouldn’t be part of the next generation losing their lives so he could get rich. He had money enough.

Which, yeah, great, Bucky could appreciate the sentiment and all, but he’d still had his arm blown off, and he still couldn’t tie his shoes in under five minutes (that anyone KNEW of anyway), and he really didn’t want to go deal with Tony.

Tony Stark was Howard’s son, and even smarter than his old man if everyone and their mother was to be believed. Bucky was sure that Howard and George had hoped Bucky and Tony would become best friends when they were kids, but that was definitely not the case. Tony was rich and smart, and he knew both of these things, and no matter how hard Bucky tried, they had nothing in common. Tony didn’t know the joy of finding the right amount of change in the couch cushions for an ice cream on a sweltering July night, or the simple pleasure of sitting on the roof of your house to watch the fireworks on the Fourth of July or New Year’s, waving at all the neighbors who were doing the same.

He definitely didn’t know what it meant to serve and sacrifice and give everything for others.

So why in God’s name George and Howard had thought, after many drinks and hours of tearful reminiscing, it would be a wonderful idea for Bucky to work with Tony on the new body and vehicle armor (since he knew the subject, and their failings, from experience), Bucky would never completely know.

Back to him on the subway in his only suit, which was tight across the seat (he was trying to embrace the murder thighs look his squad had insisted he had but this was not helping) and a little short in the arms (but so was he so…) and a terrible gray color that was popular when he was 18 and needed it for graduation. He’d also had to do something with his hair today because somehow it had grown almost three inches in ten days and he just...wasn’t ready to think about that. So he’d asked his mom to trim it up real quick and had slicked it back as fast as possible in an effort to keep it off his face.

“I cannot actually believe you are making me do this,” he grumbled to his dad, who was standing in front of him and appeared to be cheerfully sweating his ass off.

“I’m not making you do anything,” George shot back, pulling his shirt away from his body to move some air around. The Barnes men were perspirerers, which was an unfortunate trait at the best of times, but always got to be out of control on the subway regardless of the season. “I just think it would be advantageous for you to take the opportunity that has been presented to you.” Bucky gaped at him, unable to really believe the smooth shit that had just fallen out of his dad’s mouth.

“How long did you practice that in the mirror, old man?” Bucky asked because it would be a cold day in hell when the Barnes men let the other have a cool moment unimpeded by snark. He was pleased to see the smug expression on his father’s face melt and morph into one of exasperation and affection.

“For shit’s sake, Bucky. Alright, yes, I’m making you do this because frankly, I don’t like knowing you’re moping around the house while pretending you’re moving out any second, which we both know you’re not. You’re acting moodier than you did at 15, and you were an emo then. Don’t think I don’t remember buying you that straightener and boxes of black hair dye. And don’t get me started on the eyeliner.”

Bucky sat there, mouth hanging open as they lurched along the tracks and stared at his dad in disbelief. “I cannot believe...you did not just...how in the...what…Okay, first of all, it was just ‘emo’ not ‘an emo,’ that sounds like I was one of those birds that are knock-off ostriches or whatever-”

“An emu. That’s what your mother and I called you actually,” his dad interjected helpfully.

“Oh my God, I’m just gonna move past that because WOW. Second of all, you may have a point. It is..possible…” Ugh, it was like pulling fucking teeth to get this out. “That I have been less than...chipper...lately. But can you blame me?”

He wasn’t looking up as he said it, not wanting to see his dad’s face. Even though his mother was relentless in her pursuit of an “open and honest line of communication, James, I just want you to be able to tell me anything,” sharing feelings wasn’t really encouraged in the Army and it was hard for him. He saw a headshrinker once after deployment to make sure you were okay (none of them ever were but they knew what the shrink needed to hear to clear them) and once before deployment to make sure you were okay to go (none of them ever were that, either). He knew he needed to get on the therapy train since he’d promised his ma he’d go to the VA and do it, but the lines were so long and the wait was so absurd he just hadn’t yet.

Maybe Stark had private insurance, and he could skip the VA altogether.

Since he was looking at the floor, he saw his dad’s feet do the awkward and uncomfortable shuffle and knew George was gearing up for an emotional response.

“Bucky,” his dad started, pausing for a moment as he waited for Bucky to look up. “Son. I am not blaming you, at all, for any of it. You are brave and selfless, and you are where you are because of those things, and there’s no shame in that. But you’re also 25, and it’s not 1932 anymore. There are opportunities for you now that you would never have had a hundred years ago, and I’m just trying to give you the absolute best life possible, same as I have since the day you were born. You deserve everything, every single thing, you want from life, and I will do whatever it takes to make sure you get the chance at having it.

“But Buck,” and at this his dad crouched down to eye level with him, not caring a lick that they were still on the crowded subway and he was now taking up a large amount of space on the floor of the subway, which is the worst place to take up a large amount of space, really, and made sure he was eye-level to his son. "Bucky, if you don't take the opportunities, then you are doing yourself a disservice. And you don't get to complain about having no chance at anything resembling your old life, because the chances are there--you just have to be brave enough to take them."

His dad held his gaze for just a moment longer, just long enough for Bucky to see the earnest sincerity in his eyes before George stood back, keeping his eyes up and averted from where Bucky was doing his level best to surreptitiously dry his on his sleeve. The train continued to jolt and sway its way towards Midtown, and Bucky reflected on the exceptional dad he’d ended up with.

He stuck his foot out, poking the side of his dad’s shoe to get his attention. George looked down to see what was happening and looked towards Bucky when he recognized the foot. “Thanks, Dad,” Bucky said, a small smile quirking his mouth up on one side. His dad gave him the tight, trying-to-keep-it-together smile that meant he was doing his best not to start crying on the train, and Bucky dropped his gaze quickly, knowing that if his dad started with the waterworks, it wouldn’t be long before they were having a full-blown “moment” on the train, and he wasn’t about to do that to his fellow commuters.

Before too long they had reached their stop, hustling out along with the rest of the people who had the good sense to live in the outer boroughs but still schlepped into Manhattan for work. Luckily Stark Tower (Jesus God, the narcissism of putting your name on the building in letters that big…) wasn’t too far a walk from the station, and they made it in good time. Built by Howard’s father, Howard Senior, in the 1930’s, it was ugly then in comparison to the elegance of the art deco skyscrapers of the time, and it was ugly now, never having really fit in with any of the era’s of design before or since. By all accounts, Senior was terrible, more focused on his work than his son, even though Howard Junior had been groomed to take over the company since birth, and had given Howard a monster-sized chip on his shoulder that he was only now (according to George) beginning to work through. He had unfortunately been almost a replica of his father when it came to parenting and had imbued a lot of his own issues in Tony.

Knowing all of this as he did, Bucky was less than enthusiastic during the elevator ride up to Howard’s office. He felt more than saw his dad lean over to him, both of them focusing on the elevator doors in front of them.

“Unclench, son,” George whispered, just loud enough to be heard over the muzak playing over the speakers. Bucky nodded minutely, relaxing all the muscles that had indeed tightened up since they’d gotten into the elevator. He knew he was getting nervous, almost anxious even, could feel his heart rate spiking and his palms starting to sweat but couldn’t seem to stop any of it. He’d kept to himself so much since he came home, only seeing people he absolutely had to when he had to. He’d tried so hard to avoid the people who had known him _before_ so he didn’t see the inevitable pity on their faces as they saw him now.

He took several deep breaths in an effort to calm himself down, finally feeling his heart rate drop right as the elevator jolted to a stop with a cheery _ding! As the_ doors opened onto an impressive (if excessive) lobby, the red-headed young women at the desk on the far side of the room looking up as they did.

Bucky somehow managed to get out of the elevator without biffing it, following his dad as he started walking towards the desk. The young woman smiled politely and stood up, smoothing her skirt down and clasping her hands in front of her.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” she said, her voice rich and low. If Bucky was into women, he would be salivating over her, he was sure. He could see the competency in her gaze, the way she noticed every detail about them before they were halfway across the room, and part of him whispered that that level of awareness was odd for an assistant. He froze for a moment, recognizing the sound of the _other_ from this weekend, and felt his eyes widen infinitesimally before the reflexes he’d started to notice with the arm stop the movement. _Calm,_ the voice told him, _she’s useful._

He didn’t know how the other voice knew she was useful, and though he waited for a response from the _other_ since it was soooo chatty this morning, he never got one.

He could hear his footfalls on the carpet, a soft noise that was mostly muted against the dense pile of the carpet, and the gentle chime of an email coming through on the woman’s computer. Her smile, now that he looked closer, was carefully neutral, her face set in a mask of cheerfulness. Her clothes were basic, a black skirt and a white top, the quality high enough to fit with her surroundings, but not so high that you would remember it. Everything about her presentation made her forgettable, which should have been impossible with how beautiful she was.

Useful indeed.

By the time they reached the desk, Bucky was beginning to think that maybe the time he’d spent wearing the arm affected him when he wasn’t more than he realized and that maybe it was a good thing.

He hung back a moment as his dad stepped forward, hand outstretched toward the woman, Natalie Rushman according to the minimalist nameplate on the corner of her desk. “Good morning, ma’am, George Barnes,” George said brightly, clasping her hand and shaking enthusiastically when she extended her own. “This is my son, James,” he gestured behind him to Bucky, who took his cue and walked forward to shake Natalie’s hand himself, eyes never leaving her face. Now that he was aware of what he apparently thought of her, he noticed the faint scars on her knuckles and the definition of her arms and shoulders, not muscles you got from a gym workout, but the kind you got from martial arts. Sure, it could be a hobby, but he didn’t think so. He let go of her hand and stepped back, gaze staying politely out the window.

His dad was talking again, telling Natalie that they had an appointment and that Howard was expecting them, and she was murmuring a reply before buzzing the intercom to let “Mr. Stark” know that his 9:30 appointment was here.

Before Bucky knew it they were walking into an office that was all sleek mid-century lines and bright colors, such a contrast to the traditional rich person lobby that it startled him out of his own head and back into the moment.

Howard was standing in front of his desk, descending on George as soon as he was within reach for a back-breaking hug, the two of them acting like they hadn’t drunk themselves into the constant giggles a week ago at the damn Turkey’s Nest in almost-Greenpoint.

When the two finally let go of each other, Howard turned to Bucky, a sadness in his eyes that only stayed on the right side of pitying because of the understanding it was tempered with. Bucky relaxed, the tension of the day bleeding out of him as he reminded himself that of course, Howard wouldn’t pity him, wouldn't think him less than for what had happened. Howard had been a soldier, too.

He stepped into the embrace that was waiting for him and received the same bone-cracking intensity that his father had. Howard pulled back, keeping both hands on Bucky’s shoulders as he looked him over, a small smile on his face. Bucky took a moment to really look at Howard, noticing all the changes from the last time he’d seen him. The biggest was his hair, gone from the black of his youth to more salt than pepper, his mustache being almost entirely gray. He was a little thinner, a little more weathered, but he still had that mischievous twinkle in his eye, tempered though it was by age and responsibility.

“It is so good to see you, Bucky. My God, I can’t believe how big you are! It was just--”

Howard was cut off abruptly by the most theatrical retching sound Bucky had ever hear, and the three men turned toward the corner where it had come from.

When Bucky saw who was sitting on the low teal couch along the back wall, he groaned internally, fighting the urge to let his head roll back and eyes scrunch shut in frustration.

Tony.

“Spare me, please. So sad, poor Bucky, blah blah blah, whatever.” Tony was sprawled on the sofa, purple and orange checked pants clashing in spectacular fashion with everything around him, tinted sunglasses on his face (who wears sunglasses inside?) and a tattered AC/DC shirt completing what was quite a lot of look. “He’s alive, right? Still kicking, functioning mostly, even?” When he was met only with stares, Tony nodded and continued. “Good, thanks for that input. So, Buckaroo Banzai.” Tony leaned sideways on the couch, arm bracing on the back as he peered around Howard. “You need a job, right?”

Bucky decided maybe he’d misjudged Tony, had jumped to some unfair conclusions. He couldn’t put into words how good it felt to have someone not on the “Woe is Bucky” train, so he stepped around Howard, who was audibly counting through a breathing exercise, saying “Yeah, I do.”

Tony clapped his hands and stood. “Excellent! And I need someone with some experience in getting blown up, so it sounds like a win-win. This way!” Tony spun on his heel and walked out without looking back, clearly expecting Bucky to follow along.

Which, God help him, he was doing, reaching up to loosen his tie and unbutton his top button.

Bucky could hear Howard working up agitation behind him, and also George trying to calm him down before it reached its peak. Right as Bucky walked through the doors, he heard a shout of “Goddamnit, Tony!” and knew his dad hadn’t succeeded.

So maybe he’d spoken too soon about Tony. But he needed a job, needed a way to be out of his house and doing something with his life, and Tony Stark could help him do that.

\--

Most days, Tony didn’t need him actually present in the lab, which left Bucky with plenty of time to experiment with the arm.

Tony had led him up to the roof early on, showing him the corner he’d turned into what was essentially the world's fanciest fort. He had one of those giant pavilions like at fancy hotel pools filled with chaise lounges and sofas with huge cushions all in soft fabrics and muted colors. There was a fridge full of drinks, and snacks and Edison-bulb string lights twined around the roof supports, and a tent structure that made it cozy and close for the days he wanted to close the flaps and forget the city was on the other side.

Since then, Bucky had spent at least half of every day he was at “work” up on the roof learning how to be whole again.

He’d discovered that his ability to calculate distances and angles and trajectories was almost instantaneous, all the math he’d had to learn as a sniper becoming as easy as two plus two. His muscles were faster, stronger, bigger, even, when the arm was on. He always felt the expanding in his mind travel down into his body, but never really realized it was physical as well as mental until he tried to leap from one end of the roof to the other and ripped the seat of his pants just by flexing his legs to brace for the jump.

He’d ordered some of those stretchy workout pants after that, putting them in his ever-present backpack, the only place he felt safe carrying the arm around and stashing them up on the roof along with the boxes and boxes of protein bars and powders he kept for after an arm session. He supposed that all those “enhancements” burned through calories faster than his regular body did.

He’d been working steadily with the arm for almost a month and was getting extremely comfortable with it, and the way his brain processed things now. It wasn’t even _other_ to him any longer, though that might be because it had stopped turning off when he took the arm off and had just...stayed. He thought faster and more thoroughly now, things processing in fractions of seconds. His memory was leaps and bounds above where it had been, too, and he could recall everything in picture-perfect clarity, down to the tiniest details.

He’d also noticed his hair growing at an alarming rate, and during the first couple weeks had attempted to keep it trimmed short. Eventually, he had given up and just embraced the shaggy look, much to his Ma’s frustration. He’d spent a lot of time on YouTube learning how he could put his hair up one handed, and discovered whole channels about living with one arm and life hacks for it. He was confident in his ability to make a small bun out of the length of his hair and was actually looking forward to it being long enough for a high pony.

He’d had to lean into the constant stubbled look because he couldn’t be bothered to shave his face twice a day, and was learning to accept the fact that his once-meager sprinkling of chest hair had intensified and that now he was almost hirsute. Luckily he’d never been one for thin white shirts, and he could keep all of this under wraps.

So you would think that, with all the new found excellence in his senses, he’d have heard the door to the roof open and would have noticed Tony noticing him balancing one-handed on his metal arm while wearing only his black joggers, hair hanging in his face as he threw knives (something he’d learned how to do in the desert from a guy whose family had been in the circus for a century) at a target he’d set up at the end of the roof.

“What the actual fuck?!”

It was certainly only thanks to Bucky’s newly enhanced reflexes that he managed to throw the knife to the left of Tony as he fell flat on his face.

\--

Two hours and copious amounts of yelling later, Bucky was sitting in Tony’s lab thinking he should’ve made more of an effort to befriend Tony in the last three weeks because of the two of them, Tony had handled the appearance of the arm with more panache than Bucky.

“I cannot believe you hid this from me, Robocop,” Tony snarked as he marveled at the arm laid out on his workbench. Tony’s pet robots were milling about like usual, making Bucky think of the day he’d met them: Bucky had called them his pets and Tony had clutched his metaphorical pearls, vastly affronted. “How dare you, those are my _children_ ,” he’d gasped. One of them was coming over to Bucky now with a slightly dented bottle of water like the words clumsiest butler.

“Hiya, little guy,” Bucky greeted, shaking its claw gently (they were cute, okay? Sue him) before turning back to Tony. “First of all, pick a movie reference and stick to it. Secondly,” Bucky paused, twisted open his bottle of water and drained it in one go before continuing, “Secondly, I didn’t tell _anyone_ , Tony. It fell out of the literal sky as an amorphous something-or-other, wreathed in weird smoke and then I’m ninety-nine percent sure it turned into an arm because _I touched it._ How in the hell was I supposed to bring that up, do you suppose?”

Tony looked up, eyes huge behind the loops on his work glasses, and opened his mouth to retort before a thought crossed his mind so hard Bucky could see it. Tony shut his mouth with a snap and made a strange noise in his throat before clearing it forcefully. “You….may have a point.”

Bucky went to cross his arms and stopped short, realizing the gesture didn’t have the same effect with one of his arms lying on the table instead of attached to his body.

Tony noticed, of course, he did, but tried to hide it admirably, only a minute twitch of the muscles by his eye giving him away, and Bucky only knew that because of the way his brain worked now.

“Of course I have a point, Tony. Now. What have you figured out?”

The distraction worked, either on its own merits or because behind Tony’s ‘I don’t give a fuck’ exterior was a heart of gold who hated the very thought of someone he cared about suffering, and he launched into a very complex explanation that Before Bucky would never have understood by Now Bucky processed as fast as Tony could say it, answering all his rapid-fire questions about changes he’d noticed, what he could do now that he couldn’t before yadda yadda yadda.

After about twenty minutes of questioning mixed with scanning from Tony’s computer butler JARVIS, Tony asked him to put the arm back on.

“I’m gonna record it. I wanna see something.” The energy coming off of Tony was palpable, a manic sort of enthusiasm mixed with curiosity that was almost too intense for his small frame to contain. He directed Bucky over to a clear section of floor with an inlaid grid pattern and had him stand dead center before rolling a cart over with the arm on top of it. Tony stepped back behind the edge of the grid with a look that made  Bucky immediately take things eighty percent more seriously.

“Ok JARVIS, roll camera. This is the Winter Soldier Test One.”

“What did you call it?” Bucky took it back, he was not going to be super serious about it.

“Well, pal, you sound a little like a superhero, so you need a name. ‘The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country’ and all that. You,” he gestured to Bucky’s left side, “clearly didn’t shrink from the service, so you must be the opposite of the summer soldier. So. Back to the test.” Tony clapped his hands in what Bucky assumed was a signal to star, so he reached out and picked the arm up, more easily now than he had the first few times, and brought it to his shoulder.

The connection process wasn’t any less gross to watch, but it definitely felt less awful, and it was quicker by almost a minute.

He felt the familiar rush through his body, every muscle fiber and nerve ending and cell lighting up and standing at attention as the now familiar feeling rolled through him.

“Holy shitsnacks,” Tony whispered.

Bucky looked up, his awareness sharpening even more now that the arm was on again, and he looked around the lab with almost-fresh eyes, noticing all the hidden cameras and speakers, the spot over in the corner where the floor was slightly different and wondering what it was hiding. His eyes found Tony, and he cataloged the way his shoulders had broadened, his arms and chest thickening like he was wandering around with more weight on him than he actually carried. His balance was improved, almost like his fine motor skills were being honed, and his reflexes were faster.

“Who are you fighting, Tony?” he said, his voice deeper than usual, but not by much. Huh. He’d never spoken while wearing the arm before, mostly because he’d always been alone.

“What! What? I’m not fighting anyone!” Tony’s voice was too high, his pupils slightly dilated, and eye contact forced.

“You’re lying. What are you hiding over there?” Bucky gestured with his left arm, the bright lights of the lab bouncing off of it and casting patterns of light on the walls. Tony didn’t try to deny anything that time, too shocked to do anything, his jaw falling open and eyebrows almost disappearing into his hairline.

“Barnes, take the arm off. Test is over.”

“Tony.”

A single word said with all the gravitas and authority given to him by all the knowledge and instinct rolling through his brain and body from the arm, stopped Tony short. His jaw snapped up and he looked Bucky dead in the eyes. “JARVIS, bring ‘em up.”

“Certainly, sir,” JARVIS’s charmingly British voice answered. The part of Bucky’s brain that was still unadulterated Bucky Barnes really wanted to look up because he couldn’t quite convince himself that JARVIS wasn’t in the ceiling, but the Winter Soldier, _damn it Tony!,_ was firmly in control right then, embattled in the worlds most intense staring contest.

There was a hiss from a pneumatic system and Bucky saw the section of the floor in the corner slide open like the shutter on a camera, breaking eye contact with Tony to see what he was so loathed to share.

Something rose up from under the floor, red and gold and person-shaped, and Bucky could honestly say that whatever he had been expecting, it wasn’t this.

Standing in the space that had just a moment ago seemed innocuous, was what could only be a suit of armor.

He turned back to Tony, allowing the surprise he felt show on his face. “Tony?”

Tony stood there looking sheepish for a moment before visibly straightening, chin lifted. “You weren’t the only one keeping a secret.” He had his (newly muscled) arms crossed over his faded Black Sabbath shirt defiantly.

Bucky felt a smile creep onto his face, which made Tony blanch a little. “Sounds like we have some catching up to do.”

Tony rallied admirably and smiled right back at Bucky. “Barnes,” he said, “What do you remember from history class about  little organization called Hydra?”

\--

Four hours and some shocking revelations later, Bucky was feeling like he finally, _finally_ had a course of action again.

Tony, it turns out, had uncovered the remains of the fascist science Nazi regime in the midst of the most secretive intelligence agency the world had ever seen.

“I had some time on my hands,” he’d said by way of explanation. “See, Grandpa Stark was neck deep with the SSR during World War Two, and the SSR later turned into SHIELD, and he was basically the head of the science division. Helped develop weapons and tools and all kinds of things. Q to their MI6, as it were. Turns out, Dad took over when Gramps died, because he had basically been raised in SHIELD HQ and already knew everything. So, enter little old me, who only knew that the family worked for SHIELD vaguely in the same way I know that washing machines exist and people use them but I’ve never actually _seen_ either of those things in action so -”

“Tony, focus!” Bucky snapped his metal fingers in front of Tony’s face with a strange _ping!_ noise that stopped them both for a second before Tony refocused.

“Right, okay, so I was bored one night and digging around in the files and, well. I found this.”

A holographic display had been projecting into the air in front of them since the beginning of their conversation, but at this Tony turned to it and touched an icon before seemingly throwing it straight up. As he did, image after image spread wide lines of different colors leading between them in a multicolored spider web of intrigue. Bucky saw photos and news articles mixed with video and what looked like “written” notes from Tony, his messy scrawl distinct amongst all the text.

“Hydra,” Tony muttered darkly, “has been hiding in SHIELD since the end of World War II.” He touched an image of a small man, bald and doughy, with round glasses perched on his nose. “Arnim Zola, from the Science side of Hydra. Brought to the US as part of Operation Paperclip. My theory is that he started slow, trying to indoctrinate as many people as he could, and building...essentially a cult of personality around himself, much the way Schmidt did when he started Hydra. What I don’t know is why they brought him specifically, and not any of the other Hydra scientists.”

Bucky was reading everything hovering in the air in front of him, eyes darting over the dizzying array of information before him. There was something niggling at the back of his brain, a feeling of pieces shifting, moving, rearranging until it finally all fell into place.

“The super serum. The brought him because he made it work.” Bucky spoke with finality, moving forward into the holographic display and moving pieces around until they lined up and told the story he had seen.

“What?! There’s no way! That was just Nazi propaganda!” Tony rushed forward, crowding in on Bucky’s right side, eyes huge under furrowed brows as he tried to see what Bucky had seen.

“No, look, I think they had it, but it was flawed, it didn’t work. See, here, Schmidt,” Bucky pulled an official file on Schmidt closer, “seems to have gotten stronger, faster, smarter, overnight. Not to mention the whole face came off his head and he survived thing. I think they had something that worked but not how they thought it would, and definitely not how they wanted.” He pulled closer the photo that was in the file, a grainy black and white photo from a distance, of a man whose skull was seemingly on the outside. He shivered, goose bumps popping up all over his body and the plates on his metal arm shifting. Tony looked down at it in wonder, and Bucky could see the need to take it apart in his eyes.

“Focus, Stark, you can play with it later.” Tony’s face lit up with glee as he turned back to the timeline Bucky had laid out in front of them. “Now, look, SHIELD brought Zola in ostensibly because he was the head researcher on this thing right? So look at his projects, look at supplies he needed. He almost always needed volunteers, and they all died on a mission later,” he said, letting his skepticism show in his voice. “Which is probably bullshit, to be honest.” Bucky slid the files to the left, pulling the more recent stuff to him, all the little things that his now lightning fast brain had pieced together. “Hydra was founded on the belief that humanity couldn’t be trusted with its own freedom, right? But when Hydra tried to take it by force during the war, humanity resisted. What if they changed tactics? What if...what if they tried to get us, to get humanity, to give it up willingly?”

Bucky was pulling things in now, all the disparate pieces that Tony had gathered, every strange assassination, or attack that was seemingly inexplicable. “What do you do when you’re scared? If you’re afraid of something that you cannot defeat by yourself, what do you do?”

The lab was almost silent, the whirring of computer fans and the quiet susurrus of the air conditioning the only sounds Bucky could hear, and even then it may have only been because of the way the arm had kicked up his hearing.

He glanced at Tony out of the corner of his eye. He was standing before the new web they’d created, Zola at the top, surrounded by decades of subtle death and destruction all over the world. “Oh my God,” Tony breathed, “you find someone stronger. You look for someone who can protect you.”

Bucky stepped back, the hyper-focused state he’d been operating in starting to fade into mild panic. “They have to be planning something. You don’t do all this without a plan. You can’t set up a situation that needs protecting if you’re not planning on being the protector. What are they planning?”

They stood there for another hour, trading increasingly ridiculous theories back and forth before Bucky finally stopped them. “We’ll be here all night and have nothing more concrete than we do know. We gotta stop.” Bucky could see the fervor in Tony’s eyes, the fire that kept him up for days at a time working on all his projects. “Tony, c’mon. Let’s order some food and take a break.”

“Yeah, alright. Okay. JARVIS?” Tony called.

“Yes, sir?”

“Save all of this, keep it in the order we left it, and start searching for anything that matches the criteria we figured out. We gotta figure out what they’re planning.”

“Certainly, sir. Shall I alert you when my search is complete?”

“Unless it's seriously life-threatening and immediate, we can save it till tomorrow. And order some pizza, would ya? Just double my usual.”

“Of course, sir.”

“Thanks, J.”

Bucky had moved to the ratty couch in the back of the lab while Tony had been talking with JARVIS, flopping himself down and flinging his right arm over his face. He heard Tony walk over, and sit next to him on the couch.

“Alright,” Tony said, poking bucky in the ribs, “gimme gimme gimme.”

“Wha?” Bucky said, his drowsy state muzzying up the word a little.

“We have had a very hard day. I need something to cheer me up, and nothing would make me happier than looking at that arm. Now, gimme!”

Bucky sat up fully, bracing his left arm against the back of the sofa and thought about detaching the arm. It detached in the same way it always did, the plates recalibrating and tightening up, making it more compact than it was when he wore it. He almost didn’t feel the wires slithering out of him anymore, though in his tired state it felt like it was taking a little longer than usual.

The arm came off and Tony was on it in a flash, hauling it onto the coffee table in front of the couch, his loups and a tiny set of tools appearing from...somewhere. Bucky was suddenly exhausted, struggling to keep his eyes open and focused on what Tony was doing. His brain was quiet at last, and his limbs felt heavy with fatigue. After a moment, he stopped trying to fight it, and gave himself up to sleep.


	3. Who's That Guy?

“Watch it, Tin Man!” Bucky shouted, his frankly insane reflexes the only thing that allowed him to avoid rocket thrusters to the face. He and Tony were on the roof again, same as they had been every day for the last two weeks, working out the kinks of fighting as a team. They were running drills, learning to rely on each other and what their individual strengths and weaknesses were, and Bucky hadn’t felt this exhilarated since he’d been in the Army. This is what he loved, the adrenaline, the training, the camaraderie.

Bucky had asked Tony why they needed to learn how to fight together, couldn’t Tony just computer his way into things and take them down, and had gotten the world's most exaggerated eye roll for his trouble. So here they were, figuring out how to meld Bucky’s skills (Thanks, Army!) as a hand to hand combatant and long-range sniper with...whatever it was Tony thought he was doing.

Bucky had done his due diligence and given Tony a crash course in fight styles. It had been what could only described as a shit show because, surprise, Tony had never been in a fight before.

“Who’s gonna fight me?” He’d said. “They were all afraid of my name, so 78% of the time no one even got angry. I did the math.”

It was honestly lucky for both of them that Tony had the suit because hand-to-hand combatant he was not.

After almost barbecuing Bucky’s newly luscious locks (was he a little in love with his hair now? Maybe. Was going to tell anyone? Not a chance), Tony touched down next to the targets Bucky had been hurling his knives at while running around the perimeter. The faceplate on the suit disassembled, revealing Tony’s perfectly cool and dry face to Bucky’s hot and sweaty one, a feral grin lighting his eyes with glee. “Did you see how I turned? I finally got the thrust calibrated correctly, and have maximum efficiency with perfect output.”

If he could have jumped up and fist pumped, Bucky was sure he would have. A matching grin was on his own face, pleased with Tony being pleased with himself, and absolutely delighted that his friend was so proud of himself.

He clapped his left hand to Tony’s shoulder, producing a loud _clang!_ that startled them both for a moment before he moved on. “You did _amazing_ , Tony, so well. We’re ready whenever JARVIS finds us something to do.”

“Actually, Sergeant,” JARVIS said over the suit’s speakers, startling Bucky enough that he jumped a little, “I may have something.”

Tony and Bucky looked at each other, eager expressions on both their faces before racing each other for the stairwell and back to the lab.

\--

Standing in front of a map of Brooklyn, Bucky could feel his heart start racing. JARVIS had lit up a warehouse right on the edge of Bed-Stuy with increased activity from SHIELD agents over the last week bringing truckload upon truckload of huge crates into the space, and late yesterday evening there had been an increase in power consumption by over 3000% for approximately one hour before the whole building went dark.

“Oh my fuck,” Tony whispered, hands twisted in his hair, face inches from the projection in front of him.

“What? What happened?” Bucky was looking at the same figures and readouts as Tony, but he had no idea what was going on, which was supremely irritating right now because he felt like he was missing important information.

“Remember how we figured out the whole super serum thing?” Tony asked, opening file upon file in the empty space in front of him. He was still wearing the spandex from under his suit, his hair all over the place as he rummaged through the images and information at an alarming rate, looking like a very disgruntled and stereotypical ninja.

“Yeeaaah,” Bucky answered slowly, eyes trying to keep up with the rapid-paced text in front of him and failing, even with his crazy good eyesight.

“Great, so then you’ll understand why I’ve basically been doing nothing but researching it since then. Fun fact, it needs a metric shitton of power to activate the receptors on the DNA of the person receiving it. And they have to have the right kind of mutation for it to stick and not just blow out all your cells from overuse, essentially.”

“So it needs DNA that’s already mutated in someway.”

“Yes! Which is why I’m pretty sure it burned out the other participants so fast. HYDRA was born of Nazis, who basically wanted all perfect specimens, all the time. You know what they don’t have? Mutated DNA.” Tony scoffed at the obvious idiocy of Nazi’s before continuing. “It would need to be something that altered something structural, I think. Bones or muscles, probably.”

Tony finally stopped scrolling, having found what he was looking for and used both hands thrown wide to spread the information up and out. They both paused a moment, Bucky to read what Tony had found, and Tony to watch Bucky take it all in.

“You think they found someone. But did SHIELD find someone, or did HYDRA find someone?” Bucky was skeptical, not wanting to start something with someone who was on the right side of things.

“I think HYDRA found someone,” Tony confirmed.

“They’ve got a plan, now. Maybe this was the missing piece. We need to be ready. We have to train harder, read everything SHIELD is doing, prepa-”

Bucky was cut off abruptly by JARVIS, who announced that someone named Natalie was calling, and did Sir want him to patch her through?

“Shit! Yes, yeah, J, patch her through.” Tony snatched a t-shirt off a nearby workstation and threw it on over his spandex pajamas before the video feed went live, showing the pretty redhead from Howard’s office.

“Tony,” she said warmly, a smile on her full lips. “I’m running late. Something last minute from Howard, as usual. Is six-thirty okay instead?” She was sitting at her desk, still, not a hair out of place or a modicum of stress on her features, so Bucky assumed it wasn’t anything too serious.

“Uh, yeah, Nat, that’s fine. Hey, do you mind if I bring someone along?”

Bucky’s eyes got real wide and he was waving his arms in big ‘x’ motions of Nope at Tony, who looked at him and clearly saw him, but elected to ignore him. Fucking jerk. The Winter Soldier reminded him that she was useful, and more than she seemed, but Bucky didn’t care. They had bigger fish to fry.

“Oh! That’s right, your dad hired someone to help you in the lab. Convenient, really. Why go outside when new people can come to you?” Damn, Bucky thought, shade city over here.

Tony looked affronted at the assumption that he didn’t ever leave, which Bucky thought was rich as fuck considering that before the whole “Damn, you have a metal arm from space!” incident, Tony didn’t leave his lab for less than absolute necessities. And sometimes not even then.

“I will have you know I have left the lab a lot lately, Ms. Rushman. And since this person did come into the lab, I _didn't_ need to leave to make a friend, so all of your data saying otherwise is unfounded, and I therefore reject it.” And then Tony honest to God stuck out his tongue.

This was the man who Bucky was going to try and stop an evil fascist organization with. Unbelievable.

Natalie looked up at the use of her last name, eyes narrowed in irritation. “Do not,” she said menacingly, “Call me Ms. Rushman. I’ll see you and James in the lobby at six-thirty. Don’t be late.”

The call ended abruptly, video feed cutting off before Tony could snark back, which Bucky thought was a power move on the part of Natalie, to be honest. Tony turned to look at Bucky, his biggest, fakest, ‘Please do this absurd thing for me’ smile on his face. “So,” Tony said brightly, “How do you feel about trivia?”

\--

They met Natalie in the lobby at exactly six-thirty, as cleaned up and put together as they could manage in the lab. Tony was wearing clean pants, and Bucky had put his hair up before taking off the arm. He and Tony had discussed maybe trying to pass it off as something Tony had built, but acknowledged that even Tony wouldn’t have been able to get something that advanced built that quickly. Plus there's the whole “Sentient Attachment” thing and, well, yeah. They opted out.

So Bucky was in his jeans instead of his workout pants, and his good blue coat since it was still pretty cold out. Tony had found an old SSR pin somewhere and they used it to pin the sleeve up when Bucky accidentally broke the safety pin, and the white wing stood out wonderfully on the dark fabric. His backpack was over his shoulders, arm contained safely inside.

Just in case.

Natalie strode off the elevators and straight toward them, long red curls bouncing gently. She was dressed head to toe in black, the only concession to color a small red hourglass on a bracelet around her wrist. She had a jacket folded over one arm and a satchel over her shoulder, a small smile on her face.

“Ready?” she asked them, before pausing and stretching her hand out towards Bucky. “We didn’t really get properly introduced before. I’m Natalie, and you’re James, right?”

“Bucky, actually,” Bucky replied as he shook her hand, reminding himself to keep the friendly smile on his face and the calculation out of his eyes. Something about her had the Soldier (goddamnit, Tony) on edge, and Bucky had trusted his instincts too long to ignore some just because they were new. “Only my Ma calls me James.”

“Bucky, then,” she said and turned to go. “You two ready?”

They took one of the Stark cars to the bar, where they were apparently meeting up with some friends from Natalie’s old job.

“Where did you used to work?” Bucky asked as they walked into the bar, Slattery’s, and followed her to the screen set up in the back.

“Oh, I worked at SHIELD,” Natalie tossed casually over her shoulder.

Bucky could feel his brain grinding to a halt, and out of the corner of his eye saw Tony’s entire body follow suit.

They didn’t get a chance to do more than share a glace before there was a chorus of “Hello!” from a nearby table, and they were sucked into the group.

There were three other people there, two men and one woman, and while half of Bucky’s mind was paying attention to what was going on, and who was who, the other half was focused squarely on the most attractive guy he’d ever seen.

He was sitting in the corner, back facing the rest of the room, summer blue eyes watching everything. A white shirt collar was peeking over the neck of his gray sweater, matching gray knit cap on his head, wheat gold hair sticking out beneath it. His jaw was sharp and strong, cheekbones prominent, and Bucky couldn’t take his eyes off him. Introductions were finally around to him, and he had his hand out before he full realized it. “Hi,” he said eagerly, “I’m Bucky. Nice to meet you.”

The man chuckled but grasped Bucky’s had with his own, long fingers and broad palm feeling good when they touched Bucky’s skin. “Steve Rogers,” the man, _Steve_ , said, voice deep and clear. “It’s always good to have new people join us.”

Bucky was a goner. He spent the rest of the night only paying a little attention to the trivia, keeping up basically by virtue of his newly enhanced brain, which alarmed him a little, because it seemed like more and more of what changed with the arm attaching was sticking around when it was off, but he was so focused on the man in front of him he put a mental pin in it and promised to come back to it later.

Steve told him that he had until recently worked in the archive department of SHIELD, handling the preservation of sensitive documents and materials. Now he worked for a doctor in the research department.

“Dr. Erskine used to spend a lot of time in the archives,” Steve explained, taking a sip of his fancy beer. Bucky had bought the first round, Steve the second, and Tony the third, and while normally he would be feeling pleasantly buzzed by now on the strong hipster beer he was drinking, he was feeling rock steady. Steve was adorably pink in the cheeks and had started casually touching Bucky as he spoke, which Bucky was definitely here for. A guy as cute as Steve wants to get flirty and a little physical? Sign him up.

“What changed?” Bucky said.

Steve hmm’d around his mouthful of beer, tongue peeking out to chase the last drops from his full, pink lips as he swallowed. “He found what he needed, I guess. But he asked me to come up to the lab and be his research assistant. It’s not what I thought I’d be doing but I actually really enjoy it.”

God, but Steve was fascinating. He was beautiful, too, and so smart. Bucky was enthralled, in a way he hadn’t been in a long time.

The night had to end eventually, and Bucky had been getting his nerve up to ask for Steve’s number for at least an hour, running over it in his head again and again, but Steve beat him to the punch.

“Can I take you out sometime?” Steve asked as they walked toward the exit. He was smaller than Bucky had realized when he was sitting, his personality so big it made him seem larger than life, but standing up he only just reached Bucky’s shoulders, with his own shoulders almost too broad for his skinny frame. Bucky was enamoured with the mystery of Steve.

“Yes!” Bucky blurted out. Oh my God, he needed to chill the fuck out immediately, he was not some fifteen year old being asked out on his first date ever. “Uh, I mean,” he was trying to backpedal his way into nonchalance and, surprise, it wasn’t working. “Yeah. Yeah, I’d like that.” If he could facepalm without anyone actually seeing him do it, he would because _wow_.

Steve didn’t seem to mind Bucky’s sudden descent into Fucking Dork-Dom if the giant sunshine smile on his face was any indicator. It lit his eyes up, and fuck that was unfair, no one should be that damn beautiful. “Awesome,” Steve said, their eye contact still going strong and giving Bucky the good goosebumps. “Can I get your number?”

Goddamn, Steve was smooth as fuck.

They traded numbers with the qualifier from Steve that his work schedule with Dr. Erskine was unpredictable sometimes, so he wasn’t sure when he’d be available. Bucky just pointed over his shoulder at Tony as an indication that his own schedule was also bananas.

With a promise to call and a delightfully firm hug (Steve smelled wonderful, like sandalwood and salt), Steve and Bucky went their separate ways. Tony was waggling his eyebrows, a little excessively as far as Bucky was concerned but not enough for Bucky to tell him to stop. He had a potential date with a cute guy, a good job, a new (secret) arm and a boss who’d turned into an unlooked-for friend. Things were looking up.

Trust evil fascist organizations to ruin his good mood.

\--

They were running through the lab twenty minutes later, JARVIS having sent a red-alert to Tony’s phone while they were in the car.

“Okay, explain it again. What’s going on?” Bucky said as he threw  his backpack off his shoulders and onto the nearest flat surface, trying to get his shirt off as fast as possible. He flung it somewhere in the lab, not knowing or caring where it landed while ripping open the zipper to get to the arm.

“HYDRA is about to try an assassination. The Director of SHIELD has been asking questions about something called Project Insight and getting shut out right and left. His clearance got revoked in a big way this morning and he’s been making calls right and left since then to certain agents, I think trying to rally the troops, so to speak.” Tony was standing very still while his suit was being pieced onto him bit by bit, speaking as fast as possible in Bucky’s general direction. “JARVIS, Winter Soldier Protocol!”

“How do you know all of that? And what the hell is the Winter Soldier Protocol?!”

There was a sudden whirring and clanking as Tony’s suit finished assembling and he stepped off the platform. “I hacked SHIELD of course,” he said, voice tinny as it was projected over the suits external speakers, tone still translating to “the fuck else did you think I would do?”

“Do you know what Project Insight is?” Bucky asked through gritted teeth, metal arm propped on the table as it attached itself. The process was so fast, now, quicker than he ever thought possible, but it still felt so strange. He stood up when it was finished, running through the mobility drills he’d started doing every time it attached, flexing and bending his joints, rotating his shoulder and shifting the plates. The feeling of attachment and change was almost gone now,only the most minor feeling of “Wrong” remaining.

“Nope! Nothing good though, I’m sure.”

Bucky was about to look for his shirt when he saw DUM-E rushing over to him, dragging a large box behind him. “Hey, pal,” Bucky greeted the bot, “Whatcha got there?” DUM-E hauled the box front and center with an excited wave of his arm, as if he was presenting a grand prize. Bucky  chuckled to himself as he knelt down to open it, laugh fading as he saw what was inside.

It was leather, and the absolute best quality, smooth like butter and supple with it, with a high back collar and straps across the chest. He was almost worried about having to do up all the buckles when he noticed it was more of a placket of buckles over snaps, which he pulled at to open it up. “Oh my fuck,” Bucky breathed, noticing that the jacket was lined with something that undoubtedly did something great. He slipped it on and the metal arm was left exposed, which he had to admit made him look incredibly badass. It fit him like a second skin, thick enough to feel protective but light enough to keep his mobility high. “What…?”

“We have been doing actual work here, you know,” the tinny robot version of Tony’s voice said. Bucky looked up in awe at the suit in front of him, the face plate folding into itself. “You told me that bullets were bad, but shrapnel was more worrisome because bulletproof didn’t mean stab-proof. So I made it both. Add the leather to protect your skin and the armor and bam! Prototype.”

“If you weren’t in that bucket of bolts right now I would hug the shit out of you.”

“Yeah, yeah, ya sap. Get dressed! We have shit to do!”

He dropped his jeans right there in the lab, prompting a squeak from Tony as he turned around to face the wall.

Bucky pulled on the vest and matching pants before he loaded himself for bear, strapping every single weapon he found in the box to himself in various and sundry places. When he reached the bottom of the crate he touched something he couldn't immediately identify, and came up with something that looked like… “A mask?”

“Air filtration, Buckaroo. HYDRA has been known to play dirty. I built it into the suit, but couldn’t leave you unprotected. Also, anonymity. Can’t have anyone knowing who you are! Are you ready? Please say you’re ready!”

The repulsors kicked on and Tony shot to the other side of the lab, a panel in the wall opening up to an elevator.

Bucky snorted at the obvious eagerness Tony was showing and made sure to check all the corners of his surprise box of goodies, grabbing the goggles he found and pulling them and the mask on, sprinting over to join Tony at the elevator. “Okay, Batman, what have you got hidden in the Bat Cave?”

Tony, Bucky’s most favorite person in the world, had another present for him in the Bat Cave.

Sitting in the apparently hidden underground garage was a beast of a motorcycle. All black leather and matte black finishes (“For stealth, of course”), it was sleek and sexy and built to handle the considerable amount of weight Bucky was now carrying around while still being compact and maneuverable. Bucky whooped as he ran forward, trailing his hand over the sleek lines of the bike, picking up the gloves draped over the handlebars.

“Barnes, catch!”

Bucky stuck his left hand up and caught whatever it was before even looking up. The earpiece was small, and he tucked it into his left ear as he threw his leg over the bike and straddled it, looking for the ignition.

“Push that button on the handle and let's go!” Tony said in his ear, and Bucky hit the button and the bike thrummed to life beneath him, the rumble of the engine travelling through his bones. A door at the far end of the garage rolled up and Bucky gunned it, hitting the button on his goggles to bring the lenses back to clear as he and Tony took off into the night.

\--

They arrived at an apartment building in Prospect Heights much sooner than Bucky expected, but the bike was insanely fast and his reflexes were astounding. The goggles had a built-in map display on the inside with real-time traffic updates so he took back routes through the city he’d never known about, cutting his time from Midtown to Brooklyn almost in half. Also all those traffic laws he broke could have something to do with it.

Tony touched down in an overgrown lot across the street, and Bucky killed the engine on the bike and followed suit, stashing it behind some bushes. Already he could see some shady looking vans parked down the block, windows blacked out far past the legal tint allowance, and the minimum amount of doors allowed on them.

“What’s the sitch?” Bucky murmured, knowing that the thing in his ear would pick up his voice no matter how softly he spoke.

There was a snort in reply before Tony answered, “Why, Kim Possible, thanks for joining us.” Bucky glared at the dumb faceplate next to him which must look extra scary with the goggles and mask on his face because Tony actually got right down to business. “Alright, so according to the internal HYDRA chatter, Director Fury is in this building with two possible SHIELD defectors. Probably Agents he trusts, but also still possibly HYDRA until we know better. And there are three more vanloads of fascists on side streets around here, so even if these others _aren’t_ HYDRA, they’re gonna need some back up.”

Bucky nodded, and looked up when a light flicked on in one of the windows, eyes starting to scan rooftops of nearby buildings, looking for signs of a sniper’s nest in all the places he would have put one himself. “We need to be on a roof,” Bucky said lowly, eyes darting all over the building. “If these Agents are on the level, they’re not amateur enough to let the light be seen from the street in the actual window they’re near. But, if whoever Fury has come to see _is_ HYDRA, they’re gonna try to get him to the window. Not that Fury’ll fall for it, but they’re gonna try - WHOA!”

Before he quite knew what happened, he was looking down on the street he swore he’d just been standing on, wind rushing past his ears. Tony had grabbed him by the holster for the Skorpion between his shoulders and whisked him skyward, enabling him to see all the surrounding rooftops. “There!” Bucky said, pointing to a roof catty-corner to the one Fury was in. There was just enough anomaly to the shadows in the far corner that his enhanced eyesight picked it out as “wrong” enough flag it, and his brain saw the outline of a shooter.

This is where the practice Bucky had insisted on came into play because Tony swooped low over the roof and dropped him onto it. He landed as quietly as he could and let the momentum carry him forward into a roll before coming up to his feet and drawing one of his knives from his boot. God bless Tony and his ever-present need to improve everything, because his boots were soundless on the gritty rooftop, allowing him to sneak up silently behind the sniper, who was stupidly lying fully prone in a way that would take too much time to get up.

Bucky saw the tell-tale inhale and knew the man had his shot, would be taking it within moments, and closed the distance between them in a flash, grabbing the back of the man’s vest and hauling him off the ground, but not before the HYDRA agent pulled the trigger. The shot went wide of its mark, but still punched a hole in the window across the street, and the look on the man’s face as Bucky brought his face close was comical.

“This,” Bucky growled, “Is what happens when you’ve been the top of the food chain for too long.” He rapped the hilt of his knife against the agent’s temple, and the agent’s eyes rolled up into his head as he lost consciousness. He pulled a set of zip cuffs from his belt and made quick work of restraining the man, letting Tony know he needed to come pick their new captive up.

“This is amateur hour, I swear to God. These are the people trying to take over the world? Gimme a--” The silence of the street is broken by an almighty crash from the building across the street. “What the…”

On the roof opposite him, Bucky can see the roof access door open so hard it few off its hinges, buckling in the middle where it had obviously been kicked open with excessive force. Bucky grabbed the Skorpion off his back and held his ground, not sure what was happening yet. He started to backup slowly towards the other edge of the building, and heard a voice drift across the open air.

“I have eyes on the shooter. Tell them I’m in pursuit.”

The man who had burst onto the roof was huge, shoulders impossibly wide, offset even more by the narrowness of his waist. He was wearing a cowl that framed his eyes and some kind of kevlar suit and looked like a walking American flag, with red and white stripes on the belly and a bright white star emblazoned on his chest, which Bucky found absurd, but before he could analyze it any more the Soldier broke through more forcefully than he had since the beginning: _Run!_

Not one to ignore something potentially life preserving, Bucky booked it toward the end of the roof, preparing to jump across to the next building when he heard a grunt of exertion behind him followed by a vague ringing noise as if something very thin was moving through the air at high rates of speed.

Bucky threw out the metal arm behind him and caught whatever it was that had just been thrown at him. It dug into his metal palm with a grinding screech, miraculously not throwing off sparks like Bucky had expected, and looked like nothing so much a red, white and blue frisbee, or maybe a giant discus. The plates tightened up, bunching like a muscle would as he hurled the thing back at the man on the roof who caught it against his chest and was forced back a few feet on the roof in result.

“IRON MAN!” Bucky yelled, hating the stupid name but unwilling to give potential clues as to his or Tony’s identities “I need an extraction NOW!”

“On it! On my signal.”

Bucky braced at the edge of the roof, could hear the other man picking up speed to make the jump from his building to Bucky’s, “come on, come on, come on….”

Bucky spared one last look over his shoulder as the man chasing him made the leap, arms and legs windmilling as he did. With the most wonderful timing ever, just as the man tucked into a roll of a landing, Tony was there.

“Now!”

With that, Bucky jumped from the roof.


	4. Clash of the Titans

Tony had the bike started by the time he dropped Bucky onto it, and the two of them took off back to the lab.

“Who in the hell was that?” Tony asked as the suit disassembled around him.

“The walking embodiment of American Righteousness, it looked like,” Bucky answered,  busy getting out of his own gear, unloading and disarming all his guns before starting in on his clothes. “Did you see that stupid flag suit? What the fuck. He was faster than me! How is that possible?”

They both stopped dead in their tracks, the sound of server fans whirring loudly in the sudden silence. “The super serum,” they said at once.

“Oh my God, what else could it be? They got it to _work!”_ Tony was trying to get out of his suit as fast as possible, and Bucky wasn’t far behind him. They were both in undershirts, underwear, and socks, standing in front of the information JARVIS had helpfully already pulled up. “JARVIS, can you pull the feed from the suit? Did I put cameras in Barnes’s goggles yet? Remind me to put cameras there if I didn’t.”

“Of course, sir. I have pulled all available footage from tonight’s encounter. You also did indeed put a camera and uplink in Sergeant Barnes eye protection.”

“Of course I did. Genius, remember?”

Bucky rolled his eyes and thought that if JARVIS had eyes, he must be rolling them too, but his focus was pulled quickly to the video feed that started playing in front of him.

“Look,” Bucky said, pointing, “He’s so fast, faster than me, I think. And here-” He touched the video to pause it, highlighting the disc-shaped object the other man held. “He threw this with an incredible amount of force and precision. If it weren’t for this,” he wiggled his metal fingers in illustration, “I don’t know that I would have caught it, or been able to throw it hard enough to slow him down.”

The video started again, showing the catch and the sparks from Bucky’s perspective before he threw it back. The audio was so good on his earpiece that they could clearly hear his grunt of exertion and the shifting of the metal plates on his arm.

They stood for a moment longer, staring at the image of the man, bent double over the discus that had hit him in the chest before Tony broke the silence.

“Who the fuck is he?”

\--

“Hey, Bucky.”

There was a warmth in Steve’s voice that never failed to ignite an answering warmth in his own chest, and Bucky found himself smiling as he walked up to the smaller man. “Heya, Steve.”

They were standing on the steps of the Met, Saturday afternoon sun shining down on them as people swirled all around. It was their third date, and Bucky could admit that he was falling, and falling hard.

Steve was amazing. He was smart and creative, had a wonderfully dry sense of humor and a quick wit, and was the kindest person Bucky had ever met. Yes, ok, he had a bit of a chip on his shoulder when it came to his size, and his unerring moral compass led him towards a fight more often than not, but it mostly didn’t make it to actual fighting so it was a non-issue. Bucky was pretty sure it would have been a non-issue even if it had led to fights. Steve was more than worth it.

Steve wrapped his right arm around Bucky’s waist, leaving Bucky’s right side free, which Bucky appreciated beyond measure. He knew Steve had his own medical issues that he worked around, starting at the letter A and working down to Z, so it made sense he would work around Bucky’s without a second thought. It warmed Bucky’s heart every time.

He’d worried, at first, that his impromptu vigilante gig would hinder his budding relationship, but so far things were good. The bat-signal had never been lit while he’d been with Steve, anyway, and HYDRA had been fairly quiet lately, anyway. He hoped that they could get this HYDRA bullshit wrapped up soon so it would stop being a problem, but the little voice in the back of his mind asked if that would be enough? Would he be able to give it all up so easily? The Arm sure didn’t think so.

Because it was starting to fight him about coming off.

He’d noticed that the removal process was slower, sure, but he’d kind of ignored it. Okay, so he’d really _really_ ignored it. He had a purpose again! He was potentially helping and doing the right thing, and he couldn’t be blamed for ignoring the little problems with the thing that was enabling him to achieve all of that. But it had hurt a little, last time, and he’d finally mentioned it to Tony, who had promised to look into it.

So here he was at the Met with his best guy (who was also his only guy but whatever), walking around the Americans in Italy exhibit and watching the joy on Steve’s face, wondering how he got so damn lucky when Steve’s phone went off in his pocket.

He looked around at everyone apologetically, but there was something underneath it that was almost...excited? Determined? Bucky focused a little more intently as Steve checked the screen before mouthing “Just a sec, gotta take it,” to him. Bucky waved him off nonchalantly and settled himself on a nearby bench to wait.

Bucky heard Steve before he saw him, enhanced ears picking up the other man’s soft footfalls easily as they came back into the gallery. “Sorry, Bucky, something’s come up at the lab,” Steve explained, apology written on his face. “I gotta go in. Can we rain check?” He looked so sad that Bucky couldn’t even be upset with him, instead nodding and smiling.

“Sure, Stevie, no problem. Things happen.”

Steve smiled a grateful smile before they turned and hustled for the entrance. When they got there, Steve pulled Bucky in for a quick but thorough kiss that left Bucky a little dazed, before saying he’d call later and taking off down the street. Bucky saw Steve pull his keys out and open up what must be a pill case on a key ring, palming whatever medication it was before swallowing it dry.

Bucky turned the other way, heading toward the nearest subways station, figuring he could go home and get some laundry taken care off before the end of the weekend now that he had some free time. He wove in and out of the people on the street, enjoying the late spring sunshine as he headed for the train.

\--

His burgeoning relationship with Steve brought so much joy to his life.

Their schedules didn’t always line up on typical date nights, and Steve had, on average, more than one work emergency a week, but when they managed to get together, it was blissful. Since Bucky could come and go as he pleased from the lab, whenever Steve had an odd hour free, they tried to spend it together.

So far they’d seen movies, walked through the park, gone to Coney Island, and visited almost every museum in Manhattan. They never stopped touching when they were together, be it holding hands, Steve tucking a loose strand of hair behind Bucky’s ear, or Bucky fixing Steve’s shirt collar. And every time they walked each other to the train or to their front door, they spent a good ten minutes kissing goodbye. Since Steve had roommates and Bucky lived with his parents, they hadn’t had much _alone_ time, but Bucky was alright with that. He was still self-conscious about the scarring around his arm, and while he knew Steve wouldn’t care, he still did.

So maybe they’d get past making out on a picnic blanket in the Central Park sunshine eventually, but for now, Bucky was content. Summer was finally starting to make itself known, and they were spending more and more time outside, enjoying the warmth after an over-long chilly spring, and it was on one of those lazy picnic blanket afternoons that Bucky learned about a fundamental piece of Steve Rogers.

Steve had been laying on his stomach, t-shirt sleeves rolled up to his skinny shoulders, propped up on his elbows, sketchbook laid out before him. Bucky had had his head pillowed on the curve of Steve’s lower back, sunglasses shading his eyes as he half-dozed in the warm sunshine. He couldn’t imagine a place he’d rather be than exactly where he was and was just contemplating if he wanted to maybe entice Steve into a slow and sweet makeout session when he felt the muscles beneath his head tense.

“Steve?” He asked, rolling toward Steve’s head as he sat up, right hand braced on the blanket. The wool beneath him was scratchy, and he could feel the grass bend and fold beneath it, soft and relaxed as Steve had been only moments ago.

Steve jerked his chin toward the other side of the grass, indicating a  group of men harassing a couple of girls who were laying much like he and Steve had been moments before. “Aw, jeez,” Bucky started, “why are there always dudebros around to ruin someone’s da--Steve?”

Steve had gotten to his feet and started angrily across the park, sketchbook abandoned among the green and white plain of their blanket. Bucky had seen Steve walk a lot, was not ashamed to admit that he walked a little slower sometimes just to watch him leave, but he’d never seen Steve walk with quite so much determination. Steve’s shadow stretched out ahead of him, making Bucky think that maybe that if Steve’s body matched all his righteous conviction and big heart, it’d look something like that.

Bucky was scrambling up as fast as he could to follow, thankful that his legs were longer than Steve’s, and caught him up just as Steve got the attention of the dudebros.

“Hey!” He yelled, deep voice carrying easily over the distance and making goosebumps erupt on Bucky’s arms, which like, _really_ not the time! “Leave them alone.” Steve’s voice was all steel and unyielding strength, and Bucky couldn’t blame the group of dudebros for looking startled to see Steve behind the commanding voice.

He caught up with Steve right as he reached the group on the grass, the girls having scrambled to their feet as well. The four of them unconsciously squared off in front of the men on the lawn, and while Steve may not have been the most intimidating figure, Bucky knew that he himself was built like a brick house, and even with one arm looked like he could hold his own (which he definitely could). Glancing at the girls out of the corner of his eye, he saw them standing with fists curled at their sides and determination in their eyes, and their petite frames radiated a willingness to throw down. Bucky didn’t want to fight, never did, but knew that he wouldn’t hesitate if it came down to it. This was something worth fighting for.

Apparently, the dudebros didn’t feel like getting their asses beat that day, and with a few extra slurs hurled their way, they walked off to harass someone else.

Steve turned to the girls, and Bucky noticed how young they were, maybe nineteen at the most. “Are you alright?” he asked, face losing its determination and aggression. God, but he was beautiful.

“Yeah,” said one of the girls, her short hair coiffed sky high and dark lipstick on her lips. She had the same look Steve had, grim determination in the face of everything being against her, and Bucky wondered if he looked like her girlfriend, who was mooning over her girl like she was the greatest thing she’d ever seen.

Yeah, he probably looked just like that.

“Thanks for helping us,” the girlfriend said, the hot-pink streaks in her hair matching her lips that she planted right on Intensity McPerfectHair’s cheek as she came up behind her. Hot Pink hooked her chin over McPerfectHair’s shoulder as she wrapped her arms around the other girl’s waist. “You didn’t have to do that, but we appreciate it. Don’t we?”

McPerfectHair rolled her eyes, but as she caught Hot Pink’s eye she smiled just a little, stoic front broken. “Yeah, we do. Thanks.” Hot Pink beamed at her, and then at Steve and Bucky in turn, and Bucky felt an answering smile on his face.

They said their goodbyes and turned to go back to their own blanket, Steve wrapping his arm around Bucky’s waist and tucking his hand into the back pocket of Bucky’s jeans. “You sure do love a fight, huh?” Bucky said with a laugh. “You’d take on anyone.”

He felt rather than saw Steve shrug as he answered. “I don’t like bullies, Buck. I don’t care where they’re from, or what they do or any of that. A bully’s a bully.”

Bucky smiled and slung his arm over Steve’s shoulder, squeezing tight. “Well, I like you, a lot, and I like your hatred of bullies. Nothing wrong with standing up for those who need it.”

He caught a glimpse of Steve’s face after he’d said this, and his cheeks were pink, smile barely contained on his face. “I, uh, I like you a lot, too, Bucky.”

They settled back on their blanket and relaxed in the sun for a few more hours. Bucky never stopped smiling.

\--

A few weeks and countless hours spent wrapped up in Steve later, Bucky was walking to a hole-in-the-wall art supply store for a Just Because gift for Steve when his phone started ringing. He pulled it out of his pocket and saw Tony’s name flashing on the screen above a picture Bucky had taken of him sleeping on one of the tables in the lab after an all-nighter. Bucky was smiling as he picked up, a greeting on his lips before Tony interrupted. “Bucky? You gotta get to the Tower, now.”

Bucky didn’t realize he’d stopped in the middle of the sidewalk until someone ran right into him before moving angrily past him. Bucky picked up his pace, already looking for a cab. “What’s up?”

“Something is going down in Bed-Stuy. The same STRIKE teams from before loaded up and are making their way to an apartment building there. Not sure why, but it can’t be good.”

A cab pulled to a stop in front of him and he sandwiched the phone between his ear and shoulder to open the door, sliding inside and tell the cab driver where to go before answering.

“So we need to suit up?” Bucky was vibrating with excitement at the thought.

“Sure do, Buckaroo. Yours is all ready to go, so hurry! I’ll meet you in the garage with your stuff.” The line clicked off.

Sure, this wasn’t the way he’d planned to spend the day, but if he couldn’t spend it with Steve, this was the next best thing.

\--

By the time they made it Bed-Stuy, things had kicked off in a big way. A fight was happening in the middle of the street, with two people back to back surrounded by the tactically equipped HYDRA goons. Bucky and Tony came roaring into the fight, automatically going after the STRIKE team and alleviating some of the pressure off the two in the middle. Once there was a little breathing room, they finally got a good look at who HYDRA was after now.

Tony shouted so loud that Bucky flinched and almost got a fist to the head. “Holy shit! Is that Natalie?!”

Bucky took out the guy in front of him with a kick to the head, clearing his line of sight to the other fighters. The woman in the black catsuit who was currently strangling some guy to death with what looked to be her thighs alone had a shock of very familiar red hair and green eyes.

“Holy shit,” Bucky breathed. He flicked the button on the side of his goggles for the lenses, turning on the smoked gray color to cut the sunlight and hide his eyes. Just because Natalie decided to not have some kind of disguise didn’t mean he was going to follow suit. Between the mask and the goggles he thought he was pretty unrecognizable.

He fought his way over to where she and a blond man with...a bow and a quiver full of arrows...were still fighting the goons coming at them right and left. Bucky took down as many as he could on his way there and heard the blasts of repulsors as Tony did the same.

Bucky heard him before he saw him, that weird metallic hum from the discus cutting through the air. He looked up and saw the stupid disc flying right toward the blond archer, and knew he wouldn’t move in time.

“MOVE!” Bucky bellowed, using all his considerable speed to get himself between the man and the disc as fast as possible. He managed, barely, and saw the stupid thing defy all the laws of physics and rotate so it hit him broadside in the chest instead of with that deadly edge.

All the breath was knocked out of him as he skidded backward, his legs braced wide as he tried to keep his balance in the face of such an impact.

Almost before he could look up, the man from the rooftop was there in front of him, using Bucky’s momentary distraction of being hit by the whatever it was to close the distance between them.

“Cap, NO! What are you doing?!” Someone, probably the blond archer, screamed.

There was no answer from the man in front of Bucky, who was now running at an alarming speed towards him. He looked down at the disc he was still holding and noticed there were straps on the back, and oh my God it was a shield, what kind of idiot…

Bucky let the piece of himself that had always existed, even before the Soldier but had expanded since his arrival take over, drawing a long knife and gripping the shield handles in one hand, before dropping into a fighting crouch.

With a roar, the man, apparently called Cap, launched himself at Bucky in a huge leap. Bucky brought the shield up to block the hit, before opening his guard and kicking out with all his force, boot meeting chest perfectly. Cap flew backward and landed on his back before flipping upright almost instantaneously.

Bucky’s brain was cataloging all these things, looking for a weakness, a flaw, anything. He could hear the original two agents still fighting the remaining HYDRA goons, and shifted slightly, trying to keep the fight away from people who weren’t capable of taking the kind of hits he knew were coming.

As Cap ran towards him again, he flung the shield as hard as he could, reversing the hold on his knife as he followed the shield, coming up behind it quickly and trying to get inside Cap’s guard.

He’d never seen a defensive weapon be used to aggressively for offence before, and the part of him that was still capable of making non-essential observations wanted to know where he could get one. Cap was fast and strong and smart, picking apart any minute opening Bucky gave him and using it, forcing Bucky to think faster and harder and more creatively.

The shield seemed to be everywhere at once, causing Bucky to dredge up every single trick he’d ever learned for fighting with a knife.

He shouldn’t have thrown the shield back! The momentary distraction hadn't been worth it, not now that he was being blocked left, right and center by the damnable thing. Bucky had to get it out of the picture.

He broke free eventually, rolling behind a car for a moment to compose himself when a rogue HYDRA agent took a potshot at him and lucked into hitting his goggles. The lens fractured, and Bucky slowly took them off, fuming at how poorly he was doing while tossing a knife at the shooter, catching him in the arm and causing him to drop his gun. Tony must have been close, because before the other man could so much as come out from his cover, there was a blast from the repulsors and he was down.

He’d never fought with someone so well matched before and hoped to God this Cap person was struggling, too.

 

Bucky ran quickly from his cover, not wanting to be a sitting duck, and Cap parkoured his way over the top of the car, leading with a kick and following with the shield. Sensing this was his chance, Bucky grabbed the straps with the metal arm as he used it to block the hit, throwing his weight behind it as he twisted. He used his momentum combined with Cap’s to flip the man sideways while holding the shield still, pulling it off its owners arm.

With an explosive grunt, he hurled the stupid thing as hard as he could into a van, embedding it deep, and pressing his advantage so that his opponent didn’t have time to retrieve his weapon.

What followed was the most intense hand to hand combat Bucky had ever endured. If he was being honest, the knife was more threat that promise, cause he just really didn’t want to do harm to people if he didn’t have to, and he never made too serious an attempt to use it. He held it in his right hand more often than not, but called on every tip, trick and technique he’d ever learn to switch it back and forth between hands.

All he could hear were his own harsh exhalations behind the mask, and the grunts and groans of effort from both of them, and the click-clacking of the plates on his arm as they bunched and released.

He swung at Cap, right hook, left hook, right hook, each and every one dodged, before Cap got inside his guard and landed a hit of his own square on Bucky’s jaw. In his moment of disorientation, the other man jumped up into a spin kick that threw Bucky backwards into a car, the metal of body giving under his weight.

Cap was running forward, full of follow through, launching himself up and landing a knee to his chest that pushed Bucky back into the door panels, one hand on Bucky’s shoulder to balance himself after his frankly over done leap, allowing Bucky to bring his metal arm up, blocking the right hook aimed at his face. He jabbed short and fast, hitting Cap square in the face, causing the other man to take a step back.

Bucky pressed his advantage, going for a body strike with his right that Cap managed to block, sandwiching Bucky’s arm between his before setting his feet and throwing Bucky up over his hip.

Back hitting the asphalt with a bone-jarring intensity, Bucky resolutely held onto one of the arms that had taken him down with his flesh hand, using it as leverage and hand hold all at once as he surged to his feet, getting angrier by the second that he couldn’t win this fucking fight.

He grabbed Cap around the throat with his metal hand, squeezing just enough to cause oxygen deprivation, but not enough to crush the man’s windpipe or larynx. He pulled him close, giving one last squeeze before he threw him full force into the same car Bucky had dented earlier, sending him flipping head first over the hood.

Bucky didn’t waste any time, jumping up onto the hood before following Cap to the ground, metal fist meeting asphalt instead of flesh by a millisecond as Cap rolled out of the way and onto his feet. Bucky pulled another knife from a sheath at his lower back, running after Cap and doing his best to get into his space, backing him into a panel van before coming down overhand with his knife. Cap brought his arms up in an ‘x’, wrists crossed as they stopped the downward momentum of Bucky’s arm before pushing it over his shoulder to embed the knife into the metal of the vehicle. Bucky pushed to the side, knife splitting the steel like a tin can as they moved down the body of the van. His knife skittered out as they reached the rear panels, and Cap ducked under Bucky’s reaching arms, coming up behind him, looping his arms around Bucky’s middle and throwing them both backward, with Bucky landing awkwardly on his shoulders.

Cap flipped up onto his feet while Bucky scrambled onto his, and it was only then that he realized what Cap had done.

The van they’d been destroying had his shield embedded in the back, and while Bucky was getting ungracefully upright, Cap had pulled it out like Excalibur from the stone and jammed it back onto his arm.

Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck, Bucky chanted to himself as he rushed Cap, swinging blade first toward the man, trying to get to him before he had time to get that godforsaken shield up.

He was too slow.

Bucky was blocked on the forward swing by the shield, and when he reversed the motion Cap got inside his guard, using the shield to force his knife-wielding right arm up and out of an effective position. Bucky brought his left hand up and dropped the knife into it so he could punch straight down, knocking his opponent back again. Bucky came after him again, thinking that he should have the advantage already, with the amount of times his opponent had dropped back, but he’d never seen someone use anything that was meant  for defense so offensively before. He swung again, left arm attempting to connect but the other man was _so fast_ , and he was suddenly behind Bucky’s torso, turning it more as he jammed the shield into Bucky’s metal bicep.

Bucky screamed behind the mask because he could feel the pressure being put on his ligaments and bones, the sheer force trying to wedge that shield between the plates, and the shield was sliding around under his arm and uppercutting him in the face.

The shield to the face dazed him. The mask had taken the brunt of the hit, he’d felt it fracture at the point of contact, and the force he caused him to freeze for a few seconds.

A few seconds was too long. He felt Cap brace back to back with him, before reaching over their shoulders to grab Bucky by the face and chin, pulling him up and over, throwing him as hard as he could. Bucky twisted his body in the air, knowing he couldn’t land on his feet but could hit on his shoulder and roll out of the throw, and as he hit, the resulting crash jarred the already compromised mask right off his face.

He rolled up, feet braced for the oncoming attack he was sure was coming, head down, breathing like a winded horse.

After a beat of mentally preparing himself to keep fighting, he finally looked up, meeting Cap’s eyes.

To say that shock was the last thing he expected to see on Cap’s face was an understatement, but there it was. His eyes were huge underneath the eyepieces of his helmet, impossibly blue from the dirt and grime on his face.

He opened and closed his mouth few times before finally managing to say something.

“Bucky?”

Gaze sharpening immediately, Bucky crouched down a little, bracing himself. How did this man know his name?!

He heard murmuring off to his left, the archer questioning Natalie. “Who the hell is Bucky?”

Bucky kept staring, eyes locked on the man he’d just moments ago doing his level best to beat into submission, waiting. “Who are you?” He called at last, curiosity winning out over apprehension.

The man huffed before reaching up and undoing the chin strap on his helmet, tilting his head forward as he pulled it off. A spike of disbelief and recognition shot through Bucky’s gut as he saw a messy sheaf of blond hair appear before the other man looked up.

Bucky knew his mouth was open, jaw dropped in shock, and he felt his hands drop to his sides from where he’d had them half up.

He choked out his own shocked question, knowing that the feeling was assuredly mutual.

“Steve?”

The street was silent as Bucky stared at his almost-boyfriend, mind well and truly blank because of all the things he’d thought could happen, this wasn’t even in the top one thousand. How in the fuck was this giant behemoth of a man Steve?

Right before Bucky’s brain exploded with all the confusion, the archer decided to join the identity revelations.

“Clint!” He shouted, drawing everyone’s attention, waving at the assembled fighters with a grin on his face.

“What the fuck is happening?!” Tony yelled.

Clint glanced at Natalie, and the two shared a moment of silent conversation, before apparently coming to some sort of conclusion. She sighed heavily, backing up from the edge of the curb and heading down the street. “Everyone follow me. Looks like we all have some explaining to do.”


	5. Man With A Plan

A half hour later, they were in an underground safe room beneath an apartment building on the street they’d just half destroyed. The room itself was decorated in ratty, second-hand furniture, but had a small kitchen and a big bathroom, and more computers and security tech than Bucky had ever seen outside of Tony’s lab.

Tony was standing shoulder to shoulder with Bucky, the two of them off to the side of the room, separating themselves out from the trio in the middle. Clint had joined them all within a few minutes, murmuring to Natalie, or Natasha as she’d revealed to them once they were inside, that someone named Coulson and his team had taken the HYDRA douches off his hands.

They were all still in uniform, even Tony, and Bucky couldn’t take his eyes off Big Steve. He had to admit, he was an imposing figure, tall and strong and huge, with the shield, which Bucky saw had concentric, alternating circles of red and white surrounding a central circle of blue emblazoned with a white star, in its harness on his back. Add in the deep, commanding voice and the air of authority surrounding him, Bucky could admit that physically imposing and inspiring was a good look on him.

“Cap, what are you doing here? Did you really throw on me?” Clint (“Call me Hawkeye!” he’d said. “Call him Clint,” both Steve and Natasha had said) sounded genuinely hurt like this was much more than a professional dispute.

“Clint,” Steve said, and if he didn’t sound a little pained Bucky would eat his tac vest, “you’ve gone rogue. Defied orders. Tried to sabotage Project Insight.”

“Project Insight?” Tony’s voice whispered in his earpiece. “That must be what we’re missing! The end game.” Bucky nodded his head minutely in agreement, not taking his eyes off the scene in front of him. He had a million questions, not least of which was how in the ever-loving fuck his little Steve had turned into this brick house of a man, but he could wait if he had to.

At that point in the proceedings, Natasha piped up and joined the discussion. “Project Insight isn’t what we’ve been told, Steve. SHIELD has been compromised.”

The look of shock and disbelief on Steve’s face was easy to read, even from where Bucky stood, and Bucky could only assume that’s what made Tony pipe up when he did. “She’s right,” he said, voice distorted through the suit's speakers. “HYDRA has been hiding in SHIELD from the beginning. We think they’re ready to make their move.”

Everyone glanced over to where Bucky and Tony were standing, and Bucky cursed internally at Tony for drawing attention to them.

Clint piped up, asking the obvious question. “How do you know that? And who are you?” The three SHIELD agents (because what else could they be?) focused intently on the suit, waiting for an answer.

“Oh, Jesus,” Tony muttered on the closed channel before the faceplate started to retract. Bucky watched Natasha’s face intently, and he saw the moment she recognized Tony, though it was a credit to her that he almost missed it. Her eyes widened minutely and her fingers twitched before she composed herself back into that damnable blankness.

“Ms. Rushman,” Tony said, voice clipped as he nodded to her. “Fancy seeing you at this shindig. Didn’t know you were on the guest list.”

“Tony,” she started slowly, hands stretching out like she was faced with a wild and unpredictable animal, “This is maybe not the time.”

“Sure, yeah, of course. Clearly too must espionage going on for anything resembling, oh, I don’t know, an explanation. Pencil us in for lunch next week. We’ll catch up.”

“Tasha? Who’s this guy?” asked Clint. “I think like him.”

Tony smiled his million-dollar smile at Clint, and “Tasha” or whatever her name really was rolled her eyes, which in turn made everyone except Bucky and Steve laugh because apparently, they were the only actual adults present.

“Can we focus, please?” Steve asked, frustration clear in his voice. “Beyond all of that, which I don’t know that I believe, we need to address how you got involved.”

“Pfffft.” Oh, shit. Did Bucky make that noise?

Now all the heads were swiveling his way,  which means that yes, he definitely made that sound.

“You don’t think that’s something we should talk about, Buck?” Steve asked. Oh, hell no, he was not about to put this shit show they’re finding themselves in on Bucky alone.

“Oh, we should definitely talk about it, _Steve_ ,” Bucky all but sneered, crossing his arms over his chest, “but don’t start talking to us like we’re fucking kids. How about we talk about how _you_ got involved, huh? I personally would _love_ to hear that story.”

Okay, so maybe Bucky couldn’t wait.

“Bucky,” Steve started before Bucky steamrolled right over him.

“Don’t ‘Bucky’ me, Steven Grant! What the actual fuck?! Look, I know I’ve got a metal arm right now so I’m not innocent in the whole ‘doesn’t look like he usually does’ thing but _you!_ YOU ARE A FOOT FUCKING TALLER! And you have got to weigh _at least_ twice as much as usual! Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, who the fuck are you?!”

Clint, who apparently didn’t know when to leave well enough alone, chimed in with “Dude, he’s Captain America!” before Natasha not so subtly elbowed him in the ribs.

Bucky shoved his hands into his hair, gripping tightly and trying to process the situation he’d found himself in. “Oh my God. Oh my _God_. I’m dating an idiot. Captain America? You’re not a damn superhero, Steve!”

Just as Clint whispered, loudly, “Oh my God, they’re dating?” Steve finally came unglued.

“Me? What about you?! You have two arms! And one of them is metal! And this whole get up,” Steve waved condescendingly at Bucky’s fucking awesome uniform, thanks very much, “sure screams superhero to me! Though maybe villain is more accurate since you _tried to assassinate someone!_ ”

Bucky felt like he’d been slapped, and the shock of it froze him. Seeing as he’d spent a good chunk of his afternoon having the shit kicked out of him and kept moving, the irony of words stopping him cold was not lost on him. “Excuse me?” He managed to get out at last.

Steve was as red in the face as the stripes on his uniform, and he looked simultaneously angry and betrayed. “That night on the roof! You tried to shoot someone through a fucking building!”

“The hell I did! I was there to stop that assassination! Which I did, by the way, so you’re fucking welcome!” They were both breathing hard at the point, dander up and if they had hackles they would have been raised. “Did you see a rifle in my hands, Steve? Huh?” Bucky let a cocky smile play on his face, knowing that with the hard glint in his eyes it wouldn't look as attractive as it normally did, and didn’t care. “Besides,” he said, “If I had taken the shot, I wouldn’t have missed.”

He honestly should have seen the punch to the face coming.

\--

After everyone had calmed down in the wake of Steve losing his temper in a glorious fashion, and Bucky’s nose had stopped bleeding, Natasha took over as moderator of their little meeting.

Tony came out of the suit, though he left it standing in the corner ready to go, and sat next to Bucky on one of the couches, while Steve sat in an armchair across from them, silently fuming. Clint was on the other couch, and Natasha was standing in the only open side of their little rectangular furniture layout, so she could see everyone.

“Right,” she said, hands on her hips and disappointment on her face, “let’s straighten some things out.”

Bucky had hoped they could move straight to the “HYDRA is trying to take over the world” part but no dice. Natasha was determined to get the lingering tension taken care of before they set about saving the day.

She pointed to Bucky and Steve, who were both smooshed back into the cushions of their seats as if they were trying to become one with them and disappear. “Who wants to go first?”

In the end, Bucky sucked it up and went first, blowing through everything at lightspeed until he got to The Arm’s arrival. “There was all this weird smoke at the bottom, swirling around all over the place. I could feel it on me, around me, everywhere. And then, when I reached out to touch the _thing_ in the center of this impact zone, I swear to God I felt the metal move under my hand, and the smoke or fog or whatever pulled in so tight all around me and then just...disappeared. And I looked down, and laying there, innocent as you like, was this arm.”

He held it up then, rotating it around so it caught the light, making the plates move and shift. He paused for a moment before continuing, running rapidly through his secret rooftop practices, and Tony finding out, and hacking SHIELD and finding HYDRA hiding in plain sight.

“And now we’re here,” He finished simply, looking up to meet Steve’s eyes for the first time since he started his story. “And I’m really hoping that’s enough of an explanation for you because I know I was angry earlier but I don’t want to lose you over this.”

Steve’s hard look softened and he leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. “Bucky,” he said softly, “I can’t exactly throw stones, here. You weren’t the only one keeping a secret.”

Steve, lovely, determined, never backed down from a fight in his life Steve, sat up and squared his shoulders. “My turn, I guess,” he said with a rueful smile. “You remember I told you about Dr. Erskine? My boss?” Bucky nodded, vowing not to interject no matter what came out of Steve’s mouth next. “Well, I’m not only his lab assistant. Or I wasn’t, anyway.” Steve’s face went dark as he continued. “Let me start at the beginning.”

The beginning started as Steve had told him the night they met. He worked in the archive department in SHIELD, specifically in the division dealing with  World War Two. Each division only had one or two people assigned to it, so Steve was something of an expert if only because he did it all himself. “Dr. Erskine came looking for science records that had been confiscated by Peggy Carter and the Commando’s as they took down HYDRA science bases. I showed him where they were, but everything was in German, and since I don’t know German, and the transcripts were above my security level, I didn’t know what they said.”

Erskine had asked Steve to be his research contact in the archives, but after a few months of late nights and early mornings turning into a friendship, Erskine presented him with another proposition. “He asked me if I wanted to make a difference,” Steve said, so softly it was almost a whisper. “All I’ve wanted, my whole life, is to help people. Small-scale, large scale, near or far, it didn’t matter. I just wanted to help those who couldn’t help themselves. And no one has ever taken me seriously.”

“You don’t like bullies,” Bucky said, remembering what Steve had told him.

Steve looked at him, a weak smile on his face. “Exactly. And when he said it might give me a chance to live without all my medical issues? Even if it was temporary, there wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to turn it down.”

So Steve had gone through test after test, meeting after meeting, before he finally came face to face with the man who was sponsoring what was called Project Rebirth into being.

“Alexander Pierce told me society was at a tipping point between order and chaos. That freedoms were being infringed upon, and people were suffering, and that I could do something about it. That I could help.” Steve’s voice was still mostly strong and clear, but Bucky could hear an undercurrent of sadness running through it, no doubt a reaction to multiple people he trusted telling him he had placed his faith in the wrong man.

“The night before the procedure, Erskine came to see me. I was nervous, of course, because everything we were about to try had failed every other time someone else attempted it. He told me that while one part of the procedure would be permanent, would change parts of my DNA irreversibly, the part that turns me into this,” here Steve gestured at his gigantic self, “would be temporary. At least at first. He thought that continuously switching back and forth would keep changing my cells until they just...stayed. Which so far, has been true. I always go back, but it's taking longer and longer. If I only take the catalyst once, it lasts about 22 hours before I switch back. Anyway,” he shook himself, clearly ready to be back on track. “Like I was saying.

He came to see me, and told me about the other time's people had tried, and failed, to make this-”

“It was the super serum right?” Tony interrupted suddenly. Bucky had honestly kind of forgotten everyone else was there, riveted as he was by Steve’s story. “Please, I gotta know.”

Steve smiled, barely, just a quirk of his lips on one side before answering. “Yeah, it's the super serum.”

“YES!” Tony fist pumped before he looked around sheepishly and settled back down. “Sorry. Continue, please.”

Erskine had told Steve that the reasons it had never worked before were twofold. “One,” Steve said, “the serum wasn’t ready. HYDRA had rushed into human testing, believing themselves to be smarter than everyone else, and therefore above error. Idiots.”

But more importantly, they chose the wrong men. The serum needed a mutated gene to latch onto, and HYDRA being a Nazi offshoot, disregarded anyone who didn’t meet their bullshit eugenics-oriented standards. The serum amplified everything that was inside someone, and part of that was a changeability that mutated genes afforded. Steve’s arrhythmia and severe scoliosis (which, while surgically corrected, still existed in every piece of DNA floating around his body) had the necessary mutations.

“For the first time in my life,” Steve murmured, “all the things that made my life difficult, that made me different from everyone else on the most fundamental levels, made me the only person who could save the world. At least, that’s how it was framed. I’m not proud, but hearing that filled some part of me that has always resented my body’s failures.”

Erskine said that was the scientific reason Steve had been chosen by the rest of the people running the project, but Erskine had his own reasons.

If the serum amplified everything inside someone, Erskine theorized it also amplified the inner qualities of a person. “So,” Erskine had explained to Steve, “good becomes great. Bad becomes worse. This is why you were chosen. Because a strong man, who has known power all his life, will lose respect for that power. But a weak man knows the value of strength, and knows compassion.” He’d prodded Steve in his bony chest as he said it, emphasizing his belief that Steve knew all these things.

“Whatever happens tomorrow, you must promise me one thing. That you will stay who you are. Not a perfect soldier, but a good man.”

They all sat still as Steve finished his story, pain writ large across his face. “Imagine you’re me, Buck. You’ve done something so life-altering, thinking it was for the greater good, only to find out that you might just have been used by people hell-bent on the destruction of the very freedoms you thought you were fighting to uphold?”

The implications of what had happened were hitting Steve hard, betrayal clear in his eyes. “I was promised, guaranteed, that by signing up for Project Rebirth I would be helping make the world a better place. But really,” he said, the muscle in his jaw jumping as he ground his teeth together. “Everything I’ve done has put it in more danger.”

Bucky made his way over to Steve, kneeling in front of him and putting both hands over Steve’s where they were clenched on his knees. Steve looked up, surprised at the feeling of Bucky doing _anything_ with two hands, and his eyes were glassy with angry, unshed tears. He opened his hands, laced his fingers through Bucky and squeezed, seemingly uncaring that one set was rather less malleable than the other.

Steve stared at him for a moment longer before Bucky surged up and wrapped him in a hug. “I’m so sorry, Steve.” Bucky knew it was inadequate, and yet he said it anyway. He needed Steve to know that he wasn’t alone, even though his world was falling apart.

“Steve,” Natasha said, and Bucky pulled back so they could both look at her. “This is why you have to help us. I know you don’t want to hear this, but the person behind all of this is Pierce. He lied to you, to us, to Fury. Fury found out what Pierce is up to and tried to stop him. Pierce sent the assassins. Please,” and if the shocked look on Clint’s face was any indication, that wasn’t a word she said often, “we need your help.”

Tony, as unable as usual to handle a crushingly serious moment, broke the tension. “Yeah, Obi-Wan,” he chimed in, “You’re our only hope.”

Steve let out a watery chuckle and wiped his eyes on the back of his hand, stemming the tears before they had a chance to leave his eyes. “You’re sure about it? That HYDRA is back?” He asked them all, looking everyone in the eye in turn. Tony pushed a button on his wristband and the suit lit up, projecting all of the research he and Bucky had collected in front of it.

Steve disentangled himself from Bucky and took his time looking everything over. “I can’t believe I was helping them,” Steve whispered. “They stand for everything I hate. Even the thought of it is making my skin crawl.” His shoulders slumped more and more as he read everything before he dropped his head in his hands in a moment of defeat.

Then Bucky watched him literally gather every ounce of strength in his super-sized body and pull himself together. When he spun around, Bucky was sure that the person looking back at him was Captain America, and hoo boy if he wasn’t into it.

Steve gave them each a Stare of Determination before he clapped his hands together. “Alright,” he announced. “Let’s bring down HYDRA.”

\--

Sometime later, during a break to eat and drink and clean up, Bucky found a moment alone with Steve. Bucky watched as he pulled a tiny version of his shield out and popped it open, revealing three huge pills inside. He palmed one before tossing it back and chasing it with his water before catching Bucky’s eyes and quirking his lips with a smile. “Can’t be reverting back to a shrimp right now, can I?” Steve asked rhetorically, but Bucky felt compelled to answer.

Stepping into Steve’s space, and wow Steve was actually a little taller than Bucky right now, Bucky reached up and cupped Steve’s face in his hands. “Steve, you know that your size isn’t what makes you Captain America, right?”

Steve looked surprised, big blue eyes wide in his still-handsome face. Bucky missed how his nose, now perfectly proportionate, was almost too long to be handsome on his small face, and the way his cheekbones pressed so sharply against his skin as if they knew they belonged on a bigger frame and were trying to prove it. Bucky traced the sharp lines of them with his thumbs, trying to convey all his affection for every-day Steve through his touch.

“It’s weird to feel you do that with two hands,” Steve said, breaking their sweet moment and completely ignoring what Bucky had said. Bucky rolled his eyes and chuckled, leaning up to press a brief kiss to Steve’s lips before squeezing gently with his left had to emphasize its existence.

“How do you think I feel?” Bucky asked, moving to card the metal hand through Steve’s hair, letting his fingers trail down the back of Steve’s neck before coming around to rest on his chest, fingers tracing the subtle arch of his collarbone. Steve shivered slightly at the feel of the metal on his skin, and Bucky relished in the way Steve’s breath hitched. Steve liked the arm? Bucky could definitely work with that. “I mean it, though, Steve.” He moved his hand, tapping Steve in the center of his chest. “Everything that makes you Captain America is right here inside. The rest is just packaging.”


	6. Let's Get Ready To Rumble

Project Insight was the scariest fucking thing Bucky had ever had the misfortune to hear of.

Hydra had really outdone themselves, taking the fascist assholery to a whole new level. Insight was basically a mass murder initiative, billed as the biggest global defense system ever created. It spoke to how well HYDRA was connected at the highest levels that they’d been able to pass Project Insight off as something for the global good.

Steve had explained it the way Fury had explained it, so that Tony and Bucky could understand how they had gotten where they had, complete with charming anecdote about a grandfather that loved people, but didn’t trust them much.

“Back that thing up there, Spangles,” Tony cut in. “Let me recap. Ha! Re-Cap. Get it?” Everyone looked at him with a Now Is Not The Time face, and Tony paled slightly. “Wow, okay. Tough crowd.” He hopped up off the couch, pacing back and forth in the empty space between the couches. “Alright so. Correct me if I’m wrong, which I won’t be, but this is where we stand: Pierce is a lying sack of shit. He is using the helicarriers to launch satellites, which will be programmed with an algorithm. Which are _supposed_ to target Certified Bad Guys, but in actuality will target any enemy of HYDRA, which is damn near every government official the world over. And now presumably us as well.”

It was silent for a beat as they all took that in, only the sound of the server fans loud in the sudden quiet.

Steve unfolded himself slowly from his seat, pulling himself upright to his new height, grounding himself with a roll of the shoulders that migrated all the way down his body, ending as he dug his boots in. He was the epitome of rock steady, and Bucky knew that even if he wasn’t emotionally invested in Steve, he’d follow him to the ends of the earth, and be right in doing so. Steve was the embodiment of Truth and Justice, and looking around at everyone else, he saw he wasn’t the only one with conviction and determination shining from his eyes.

Steve settled his thumbs in his belt before taking a deep breath and leveling them all with a steely gaze. “We need to stop this. HYDRA has spent too long growing under our very noses, and I will not allow them to continue unimpeded as they work to throw the world into chaos. The question is, how do we stop them?”

Bucky knew it wasn’t the time, but he was really, _really_ digging this side of Steve. He didn’t even care if the height and the muscles were involved, the sheer confidence and assuredness radiating off Steve at the moment was _so incredibly attractive_ Bucky had to take a few deep breaths to get himself under control.

They all looked at each other for a moment, trading glances and seeing if anyone had even an inkling of what to do. Tony had the thousand-yard stare going, but as he slowly came back from wherever it was he’d been, a tentative smile crept in. He looked at them each in turn, saving Steve for last before holding a finger up in front of himself and saying, “I think I may have an idea.”

\--

“Are you sure about this?” Clint asked for the fifth time. He, Bucky, Steve and Tony were getting ready to storm the gates as it were, walking up to a small back-door to SHIELD headquarters in DC.

“Yes, for the millionth time, _Clinton_ , it’s gonna work!” Tony hissed back at him, having answered the question from all of them many, many times over the last three days.

The plan was three phases, and that was really too many phases for Classic Bucky to be comfortable with. New Bucky was great with it, so while Bucky’s brain was having no problem processing what was happening, the part of him that had experienced all the complicated plans of the army going tits up ten minutes in was wary of any plan with more than one phase.

Phase One: Steve was going back to SHIELD, sans Natasha and Clint, to tell them that the AWOL agents had help from some “unknown players” in taking down the STRIKE teams and evading capture, the Winter Soldier and Iron Man being those unknowns. Steve was then to get a tiny transmitter onto one of the computers so that Tony and JARVIS could get into the SHIELD systems they’d been unable to hack.

Since Steve was going to go back to SHIELD like he was still a good little soldier, making himself extra visible to anyone and everyone in the whole organization, Natasha and Clint were going to get in touch with former Directory Fury of the botched assassination, to see if he knew how the algorithm was stored on the ships.

“If I know how the targeting system is set up,” Tony explained, “I can use the same format to take them down.”

After two weeks of undercover work for Steve and programming binges for Tony, Phase Two of their plan was a go.

They popped the door to the small security room in some back corner of the building, a huge three-towered monstrosity called “The Triskelion,” which Bucky personally thought was a little ridiculous, but then again who was he to judge? He was called the Winter Soldier for God’s sake.

The door banged open as it slammed against the wall, Clint and Tony the first through the door as they covered the room. Bucky had been pleased to find out that both Steve and Clint knew how to properly clear a room as a team, which meant he’d only had to teach Tony. Steve walked in next, shield on his arm and cowl (“it’s not a helmet, Bucky”) on his head, looking imposing and authoritative and delicious, if Bucky was being honest, and shook his head at the agent attempting to draw his weapon. “Son, just don’t.”

Bucky snorted behind his mask, knowing Steve could hear him over their comms. The idea of Steve calling someone ‘son’ in such a condescending way was hilarious. Bucky brought up the rear, not trusting anyone but himself at the team’s six. He had his rifle in his hands and was absolutely bristling with weapons and ammunition, having grabbed anything and everything he could carry before they left.

Phase Two involved shaking out who was SHIELD and who was HYDRA before they made their run to the helicarriers to swap out the targeting chips.

“Of fucking course we have to get on the damn things,” Bucky had said when Natasha and Clint returned from their meeting with Fury. “Why make it something that can be done remotely. Damn paranoid bastards.” Bucky had wandered off, muttering about the logistical nightmare that getting four people on three different helicarriers was going to be. He still felt that way but embraced The Suck like the Army had taught him, so he was ready to roll when they made their move. Steve was right that it would be easier to manage if they had clear enemies, and if the people of SHIELD who _weren’t_ HYDRA were helping take out some of the opposition.

The kid who’d drawn on them (shit, he couldn’t be more than twenty) backed down in the face of Captain America and Steve nodded to him before going to the comms station on the desk. He pushed a button on the console and started to speak.

“Attention, all SHIELD agents. This is Captain America. You’ve seen a lot of me over the last few days, and I think it’s time you know the truth. SHIELD is not what we thought it was. It’s been taken over by HYDRA. Alexander Pierce is their leader. The STRIKE and Insight crew are HYDRA as well.” Bucky heard the gasp from almost everyone in the room as Steve delivered this news and took note of those who didn’t seem surprised.

“I don’t know how many more of them there are, but I know they’re in the building. They could be standing right next to you. They almost have what they want: absolute control. They tried to kill Nick Fury, and it won’t end there. If you launch those Helicarriers today, HYDRA will be able to kill anyone that stands in their way, unless we stop them. I know I’m asking a lot, but the price of freedom is high. It always has been, and it’s a price I’m willing to pay. And if I’m the only one, then so be it. But I’m willing to bet I’m not.”

“Jesus Christ,” Bucky heard Clint mutter before he spoke louder. “Did you practice that beforehand, Cap, or was that all off the cuff? Inspirational asshole.”

Bucky heard the sound before anyone else, and spun around with his metal arm raised, blocking the blade that was coming towards his back. The HYDRA agent he’d clocked earlier had snuck up behind Bucky, or thought he had anyway, and Bucky threw him into the far wall before anyone else fully registered what was going on. God bless the SHIELD agents who weren’t even phased by it and only hurried to restrain him before he could get up and cause more trouble. Bucky looked at Steve and said “I think that’s our cue, Cap,” before he walked to the door.

They needed to make their way down to the Insight launch bay to swap out the targeting chips with the ones Tony had made for them that would have the helicarriers targeting each other and had figured that if they could out the hidden HYDRA agents before they tried, they could hide their intentions in the chaos.

It worked almost perfectly, and the lobby and hallways descended into pandemonium as the loyal SHIELD agents clashed with their HYDRA counterparts in every open space in the building. Tony led the way since he could pull the Triskelion layout maps up inside the suit, with Clint next for cover, Steve after him and Bucky bringing up the rear. They made it to the launch bay quickly and had started splitting off to their respective carriers when the STRIKE teams found them.

Clint and Tony made it quickly since their carrier was closest, Clint taking the nearest attackers out while Tony provided support from above.

Steve and Bucky sped toward their carrier, putting their enhanced speed to good use and making it there unimpeded. They climbed on board and were halfway down the deck of the helicarrier when it started to move. “Oh, shit!” Steve said as they both braced. Bucky looked up, his goggles switching to their gray lenses because the ceiling above them was opening up, sunlight illuminating the streams of water trailing down from the edges of the doors.

“Why is there water? Cap. Why is there water?” Bucky turned his head, and instead of getting an answer from Steve, he saw that they had company. “Fucking great. Get ready!”

The first shot from their attackers went wide, the lurching and swaying of the carriers throwing off even Bucky’s impeccable aim as he tried to fire back. He dropped low, crouched down and braced himself, and saw the squad of HYDRA do the same.

“You gotta switch the chip!” He shouted at Steve over the rushing wind. “I can handle these guys. Go!”

“No!” Steve shouted right back. “Not without you!”

The wind was whipping Bucky’s hair in his face, blurring his vision as it snagged in his goggles, but he could see the fierce expression on Steve’s face as he yelled, face red with heat and emotion, eyes steely and determined beneath his cowl. God, but he was perfect.

Bucky made sure Steve was looking at him before he pointed to the central hub of the carrier. “Alright!” he agreed. “Then we gotta move!”

On Bucky’s signal, they ran for the control tower in the center of the deck, ducking behind planes that had been left on the deck as shots rang out behind them. Bucky got off shots when he could, switching out his rifle for a pistol because he just did not have time to sit and aim right now. Steve was clearly wary of losing the shield to what could only be the Potomac River below them and had pulled out the gun Bucky had forced on him earlier.

They managed to take out a few of the HYDRA agents behind them, but as they made their way into the control tower, tactics had to change. Bucky reloaded the gun in his hand as the door to the tower swung shut behind them with a clang, Steve bending the handle to an impossible angle with a screech of metal.

“There,” he said as he turned to the stairs.

“It’s not gonna hold them for long, pal,” Bucky told him, starting on the stairs heading down. They needed to get to the domed hub underneath the carrier to swap out the chip, and they needed to get there fast.

Bucky tapped the comms unit in his ear to switch to the group channel.

“How’s it going, guys?” Bucky said as soon as the line clicked on. He could hear some grunts and the _twang_ and _thwip_ of Clint’s bowstring and the _whoosh_ of Tony’s repulsors and sent up a silent prayer that nothing had gone wrong on their end.

“Great!” Clint said with a laugh, finally. “This is the most fun I’ve had since Budapest!”

There was a whoop and a particularly loud _clang!_ and then Tony chimed in with that they were all thinking. “I don’t know if I’m more appalled or intrigued about what happened in Budapest.”

“I’ll tell you after!” Clint promised. Wind rushed past the mic and Bucky heard Steve grunt as the sound assaulted his super-sensitive ears.

“Clint,” Steve cut in. “Did you swap the chip?”

“Oh, yeah!” Clint confirmed. “We’re on our way to the last carrier now! We got this!”

Bucky was about to reply when they finally ran into someone on the stairs. He could feel Steve at his back as he slipped the gun back into its holster, too wary of ricochet bullets to risk it, knowing that between his arm and Steve’s shield they would be alright.

Two shots rang out and Bucky had his left hand up to catch them before he’d fully registered the movement, locking eyes with the man on the stair below him, gun still raised. Bucky darted his arm forward, grabbing the slide on the gun and pulling it towards himself and tossing it away.

“Down!” Steve yelled behind him, and Bucky ducked as Steve let the shield fly.

Bucky wanted one so bad.

It hit the attacker farthest from them square in the chest, bouncing off and hitting the wall before coming up to hit the next one in the back. Both went down and Bucky knew from experience that it was unlikely they’d be getting back up.

Bucky vaulted over the handrail, down to where the shield had wedged itself in between the stairs and the wall and picked it up, smashing the next attacker who rushed him in the face before flinging it skyward to where Steve was waiting higher up the stairs.

They worked in tandem from either end, taking out HYDRA agents like they were knocking down bowling pins, passing the shield back and forth to maximize the shield’s personal laws of physics in the tight space.

They met in the middle, both breathing hard and sweaty, fierce grins on their face. “Damn, we make a good team,” Steve panted, eyes alight with adrenaline and battle fever. Bucky rendered Steve a cheeky salute and nodded before turning and running down the stairs again.

Steve used the shield to break the lock on the bottom of the door, sheering it off with one clean hit. Steve went low and Bucky went high, weapons aimed and ready as they went through the door.

The room was huge with a network of catwalks and support beams that were suspended above a glass dome beneath their feet. The catwalks were all leading to a large glass enclosure in the center of the room.

“Here we go,” Steve said, as he took the first step onto the catwalk. They made their way slowly down the small walkway, one foot in front of the other, constantly checking for anyone hiding behind the beams.

They were almost to the central casing that surrounded the massive computer banks that served as the brain of the carrier, all the Insight data stored within it. All they had to do now was swap the chip and they could find a way off this flying monstrosity.

Right as they reached it, a man stepped in front of them on the catwalk. He had big white gauntlets on his forearms, and white straps crossed over his tac vest. A full face mask in a dingy cream covered his face, though his eyes glinted darkly from the depths of it.

“Well, well, well,” the man said, voice rough through the mask. “See you finally found yourself a friend, Cap.”

“Rumlow,” Steve said, shield at his side, hands loose and easy. Bucky didn’t feel like faking nonchalance with someone so clearly bent on their destruction, so he kept his pistol at the ready, not quite aimed at the man but also not down at his side where it would be useless, _Steve_.

“He’s Crossbones, now, Cap. The Fist of HYDRA.” There was a  second voice from behind them, and Buck heard Steve murmur the name Rollins under his breath like a curse. Bucky was unable to help himself as he snorted behind his mask. The new guy looked at him from where he stood on the platform by the door, eyes narrowing in a snarl but Bucky really couldn’t care. “It won’t be so funny when you’re dead and falling into the river, you metal armed freak.”

“Uh, excuse you, I’m the Winter Soldier since we’re being technical.” Bucky touched the side of his mask to turn on the muting effect, keeping everything he said for Steve’s ears only. “You need to get past these guys, Steve. Get that chip swapped out. This fight is mine, alright?”  Bucky stood impassively, body angled as he tried to keep both men in his sights.

“Wow, Cap, you’ve really lowered your standards since you left the winning side,” Crossbones said. “Who knew you’d teamed up with a clown. Do you miss me, Cap? Can’t be easy having such an idiot on your team.”

Bucky fought the urge to roll his eyes as he put his pistol back in its holster, instead drawing his two best knives with a flourish. Crossbones wanted to think of Bucky as some incompetent moron Steve found on the streets? Bucky could work with that.

“You fucked with the wrong people, Cap,” Rollins said, checking the clip on the gun in his hand.

Out of the corner of his eye, Bucky saw Steve settle the shield more securely on his arm before he gave an almost imperceptible nod. “Up and over him Steve, alright? On my mark. One,” Bucky tensed his muscles, ready to launch himself at the exact second he needed to. He saw Steve do the same as Crossbones kept monologuing. “Two...Three!”

Steve and Bucky both jumped, Steve up and Bucky forward, knives at the ready and leading with his left side. Steve used the handrail to vault up and over Crossbones as Bucky tackled him to the floor. Bucky rolled to his feet, arm up to block the shot Rollins had taken at him. It pinged off the very edge of his palm, and he sent up thanks for the man using a pistol from such a distance. He wasn’t incredibly accurate, but then again, he didn’t need to be. He only needed one good shot to take Steve down.

With a growl, Crossbones launched himself from the floor, the distinctive _snick_ of blades releasing warning him about what was coming.

Two long, thin stiletto’s had come out of the gauntlets, and Bucky felt a feral smile take over his face. Nothing like a good, old fashioned knife fight.

All Bucky could do was keep Rumlow as engaged as possible, while continuously positioning him to block Rollin’s shots on Steve. Steve had to succeed, no matter what.

Crossbones was faster than Bucky expected, and their blades were blurs of silver as they sliced and swung at each other, working backward and forward down the catwalk, none of them gaining ground for long. Rollins’s potshots were a distraction, one he couldn’t afford if he was going to win.

The odds we stacked so high against him. Even he couldn’t watch his own back for much longer. Someone was bound to land a hit eventually, and another, and another, until even Bucky couldn’t keep fighting.

It occurred to him that he may not make it out of this fight. He’d only just gotten Steve, it wasn’t fair! He couldn’t die now!

But what was his life against millions?

He had to give Steve the time get that chip swapped, by whatever means necessary.

“How we doing?” Bucky asked, sound dampening still in effect on the mask. He knew it must be unnerving his opponent to be fighting someone who didn’t even sound a little winded.

“Almost there,” came Steve’s reply and Bucky heard their line switch to the open comms channel. “How we doing, Clint?”

“Time’s flyin’ fellas,” came the reply over a steady _thunk thunk thunk_ sound. “Nat took care of Phase Three. Pierce is no more, and she dumped every file she could find on the internet. HYDRA has nowhere left to hide. But we’re working on a shorter schedule now so let shake a leg, huh?”

“Copy that,” Steve said before crying out in triumph. “Got it! Bucky, you ready?”

Bucky sped up his movements and saw the surprise and first inklings of fear in Crossbones eyes as he realized he hadn’t seen the real skill of the Winter Soldier yet. “Let’s blow this pop stand.”

In a movement too fast to follow, Bucky got inside Crossbones guard and sliced through the straps on his chest, which apparently had actually been for holding the vest on and not just looks, and it fell away to the glass beneath them. Bucky turned, ducked under the stiletto swung at his head and came up with the knives over his head, driving them in deep on either side of Crossbones chest.

The man fell with a scream, the knives staying in Bucky’s hands as Crossbones dropped, and he knew at least one of them had sliced the muscles that connected shoulder to chest, and one had hit something vital. Crossbones attempted to stab Bucky in the leg with the arm that still worked, and Bucky spun quickly out of the way, ripping the knives out in the process. Blood spurted from the wounds, pulsing wetly as the knife skittered off of his boots and Crossbones overreached, desperately trying again, and lost his balance, tipping over the side and falling to the glass below.

“Time to go!” Bucky said, racing to Steve. Bucky pulled a gun and looked around for Rollins, determined to tie up loose ends, but he was nowhere to be seen, and Bucky knew he and Steve didn’t have time to waste looking for him.

They ran back the way they had come and were almost back to the doorway when the first explosion hit.

“Shit!” Steve yelled, crouching down and grabbing the hand rails. “I thought we had more time before the carriers shot each other to pieces!”

“Sorry, Steve,” came Natasha’s voice, “I had to speed up the timeline. Pierce put up more of a fight than I thought. I had to guarantee that he didn’t have long to override the new targeting if you got the chip swapped before I could take him out.”

“Well, what the fuck are we supposed to do now?!” Bucky screamed, fear taking hold in the pit of his belly at the sound of the explosions, glass shattering and metal tearing all around him. It sounded too much like his accident.

“I’m coming, guys, hang on,” Clint said, and he saw a tiny speck of a helicopter start towards them from where it had been hovering. Bucky could see the other two helicarriers firing on each other, the one that had never made it out of the launch bay catching everything around it one fire while the one in the air was sending pieces of debris into the river below. The next explosion tore the catwalk from its moorings and sent him and Steve tumbling down to the glass dome.

Amid the smoke and the dust from the blast, they hauled themselves to their feet. They stood there holding each other, bone tired, sweaty and covered in soot, and waited for Clint to come get them. There was a hole in the glass to their right, and Bucky stepped away to see if they could use it as an exit. The helicopter came closer, and Bucky was turning to Steve to suggest he move closer to the opening when he saw the flash of gunfire.

Over Steve’s shoulder, Bucky saw Rollins, burned and bloody, clutching a pistol in his hand like a lifeline, fire five more times in quick succession, shots landing in the middle of Steve’s body from the back. Steve jerked next to Bucky, surprise in his big blue eyes and blood blossoming on his uniform. He’d never holstered his shield, oh God, there was so much blood. Bucky drew another gun took two huge steps forward, Rollins dead with two in the chest and one in the head before he realized he’d done it.

Bucky turned around and cried out, because Steve was swaying, too close to the opening and then he was falling, body twisting in the air as he plummeted to the river below.

“STEVE!!!” Bucky screamed as he raced to the opening. He flung himself out and after Steve.

\--

_Beep...beep...beep...beep…_

Someone needed to shut that alarm off, Jesus. Bucky groaned and tried to roll to the side to turn off his alarm but stopped when he felt sharp tugs on his arm and the hairs on his chest. “Hng…?” He said, mouth gummy and foul now that he was aware of it. His eyes were gunked shut as well, and he reached up weekly with his left arm, remembering what happened when he tried to reach with his right, and spread his eyelids between his fingers feeling the lashes unstick themselves from each other, first one eye and then the other.

He blinked rapidly, trying to shake off the lingering bits of sleep from his eyes, and looked around.

The sterile white walls, pungent smell of bleach and the harsh sunlight pouring through thin curtains clued him in quickly to the fact that he was in a hospital. He turned his head the other way, toward the sound of what must be his monitors and tensed minutely at the sight of the other bed.

Steve was laid out on the other side of the room, hooked up to a similar array of machines as Bucky and still unconscious.

“Well, good morning sunshine. Fancy seeing you up.”

Bucky turned his head back towards the door, tearing his eyes away from where they’d been studying Steve to find Tony standing in the doorway, a takeout bag in his hand.

Bucky unstuck his tongue from the roof of his mouth and tried to speak, but nothing came out. Tony hurried to his bedside, setting the bag on the little rollaway table and reaching for the pitcher of water. He poured Bucky a cupful and plopped a straw into it, snagging a chair with his foot and sitting down next to Bucky, proffering the water.

Bucky sipped slowly, remembering how he’d gulped down water when he’d first woken up after his accident and then promptly thrown it all back up. When his mouth felt more like a mouth and less like sandpaper, he pulled away and settled back, less tired than he would have been before the arm but still exhausted.

“How is he?” Bucky croaked out, a small jerk of his head indicating Steve.

“Better than he has any right to be, considering.” Tony sat back as well, propping his ankle up on the opposite knee. He regarded Bucky thoughtfully, and Bucky began to fidget, fingers rolling the blankets between his fingers.

Finally, he broke. “What?” he asked sharply.

Tony grinned, leaning over to grab the bag of food. “I’ve got a proposition for you.”

\--

After they were released from the hospital, Bucky and Steve drove upstate to check out the details of Tony’s proposition.

“So wait,” Steve said as the doctor was checking him over before signing his official release. “You want us to save the world as like...our job?”

“Yeah!” Tony replied, sitting next to Bucky on the other bed and swinging his feet like an overgrown child. “Why not? SHIELD is in shambles, and the other alphabet agencies aren’t equipped to handle the frankly bonkers shit SHIELD was taking care of on the downlow.” The SHIELD files Natasha (Who had the unbelievably cool code name of Black Widow, and no, Bucky wasn’t jealous, thanks very much) had dumped on the internet were full of all kinds of fascinating information, including a number of extraterrestrial and superhuman threats to the worlds safety that they had been handling quietly since the end of World War Two. “Way I figure it, we’re Earth’s best chance at coming out of the next threat alive. Besides, it wouldn’t be just us. Nat and Bird Brain have already agreed.

“So an archer, a spy, a robot man, a super soldier with an alien arm and...me.”

Bucky rolled his eyes so hard his whole body joined in. “Jesus, Steve, you literally got the _Super Soldier Serum_ , and in case you haven’t noticed, you are still gigantic, and its been 48 hours since you took one of those pills.”

Steve looked absolutely shocked, which Bucky thought was a bit much.

“Oh, shit,” Steve said.

“Oh, shit,” Bucky agreed.

After a minor freak out about wondering if he’d ever turn back to his smaller self, Steve got over himself and remembered that he actually liked being this size better, smiling at the thought that maybe this time was the one that would stick.

Two days later, Bucky and Steve took Bucky’s bike upstate (Steve was insanely jealous of it and all but begged Tony to make him one, too) to the address Tony had provided. They didn’t expect to find a mostly built facility full of huge suites and training rooms and labs, but maybe they should have. It was Tony, after all.

So they talked about it, saving the world full time. Stark Industries had promised to bankroll the whole endeavor as long as some of the technology they developed for the team was patented by the company. Tony had agreed, with the caveat that he had full veto power over what did and didn’t get patented. He didn’t want something of his to be twisted into something like Insight.

Tony promised them a suite, which at first seemed a little rushed but the more Bucky thought about it the more he liked the idea of sharing his every day with Steve. Brushing their teeth together, making dinner, training, sparring, and spending lazy afternoons making out in the sunshine like they used to. Maybe spending lazy evenings in bed doing that and more.

They called Clint and Natasha, who confirmed their participation in this whole idea, and Natasha talked about recruiting some of their old contacts, too. “I’ve got a few leads,” she said, and Bucky could hear the sly smile in her voice. “A scientist for Tony, a soldier for you two, maybe one more, if we can get ahold of him.”

They talked some more, long conversations over the phone from their respective bedrooms after they’d gone back to the city, and finally come to the conclusion that they should do it.

“Besides,” Steve said, “Doesn’t look like I’ll ever be small again. Feels like I should use this gift like Erskine intended it.” There was a sadness in his voice, and Bucky cursed the distance between them once again. They’d found out in the aftermath that Erskine had put up a fight when HYDRA had come for him in his lab. He’d left a note for Steve that had been delivered later that reminded him to remember what he was: not a perfect soldier, but a good man.

The last of the serum pills had been delivered a short time after Insight, and Steve had been rationing them at first, worried that he’d run out before Tony could figure out how to make some more. He’d taken one before he sparred with Bucky one day, and they’d waited a week for him to turn back into his smaller self but he never did. Steve had never been happier.

\--

_Six Months Later_

 

Bucky was laying in the sunshine, head pillowed on Steve’s lower back when the call to Assemble started.

“Ugh,” Steve said, and Bucky could hear him shuffling the pages of his sketchbook into order and gathering his charcoal. “I had a flow. Why do people always try to take over the world when I’m in a flow?”

Bucky chuckled as he got to his feet and pulled Steve up after him. He rose on his toes to reach his slightly taller boyfriend, planting a sweet kiss on his lips. “I don’t know, Stevie, but I promise to hit whoever this is extra hard for interrupting you.”

“You’re a charmer, Bucky Barnes,” Steve said with a grin as they picked up the pace and started to jog toward the new and improved hangar where their gear was always at the ready. Natasha reached it at the same time they did, Clint right on her heels. Tony walked down the ramp of the jet and looked at them all before a grin split his face. “Avengers!” He said loudly, and collectively the rest of them groaned before they answered, reluctantly.

“Assemble!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! It's finished! Thanks for reading!! 
> 
> Come hang out with me on [Tumblr!](https://kat-atomic.tumblr.com/)  
> 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments/Kudos always appreciated!
> 
> Come hang out with me on [Tumblr!](https://kat-atomic.tumblr.com/)  
> If you enjoyed this story, please consider reblogging the [Tumblr Masterpost](https://kat-atomic.tumblr.com/post/174623720767/outside-in)
> 
> EDIT: I’m now on [Twitter!](https://twitter.com/KatAtomic2/)  
> Things are weird and wonderful over on Fandom Twitter so come hang out!


End file.
